Coupon organizing 101
photo by Mike Licht
If you clip coupons, you’ll want to organize them. You want to find the coupons you need quickly so you don’t miss out on any money-saving opportunities. Creating the best system depends largely on how many coupons you clip and use. For some people, a paper clip will suffice, and for others an entire plastic caddy is the only way to go. Organizing coupons will help you weed out any that are soon expiring or are already expired, too. How do you organize your coupons?
Here are a few systems to consider.
ENVELOPES: Write your various coupon categories on each envelope. Then file your coupons in the corresponding envelopes. You can stack them and hold them together with a rubber band, put them into a container and bring it with you, or pull the coupons as needed for each shopping trip. Or punch a hole in each envelope and use reinforcement ring stickers and a steel ring to keep them together. Reinforce your envelopes with clear packing tape to prevent wear and tear on your envelopes.
ACCORDION FILE: You can find these in plastic, paper and cloth. They’re sometimes called check files or bill organizers. They’ll have 12 to 13 tabbed dividers that you can use to label your categories. They’re small and easy to carry or tuck into a purse or leave in your car. You can make your own. Visit www.paper-source.com/cgi-bin/paper/howto/ideas/envaccordion.html for instructions. If you have a lot of coupon categories, you can use two files. You can also buy the large-sized accordion files and organize entire coupon inserts instead of individual clipped coupons.
BOX: You can make your own dividers from index cards, thin cardboard or card stock. Put them in a shoe box, baby-wipes container, recipe file box or an index file box.
PHOTO ALBUM: You can use a large-sized album with multiple pocket inserts or a mini album. One reader, Bevv in Texas, shares: “I use a 4-by-6-inch pocket album. It has two pockets on each side of the page. I use stickies to make labels. It’s easier for me to flip pages than to leaf through a traditional coupon holder. My coupons are sorted by products, and the pages are placed in order of the aisles of the store that I use the most. They also can be alphabetical.”
BINDER: This can be a three-ring standard binder or a zippered binder. Both can hold baseball-card sleeves to organize your coupons. It can be time-consuming to set up, but once you’re done, you can see your coupons from a glance. As with any system, you can organize your coupons by product, expiration or alphabetically. You can easily add pocket folders for your shopping list, price book (www.frugalvillage.com/2008/08/23/use-a-price-book-to-pay-less) and sales fliers and a pencil pouch to hold scissors, a calculator or pens. You can slide your grocery list into the cover or a plastic sleeve and use a dry-erase marker to check items off your list as you shop.
Another reader, Deb in Kansas, shares: “Be sure to get one that is 2 or 3 inches thick and zips closed. A pocket on the inside or outside to hold your grocery ads is nice, too. I pull my expired ones out when I am filing the new ones. I throw it in the trunk whenever I leave the house. My binder is a Case It brand, and has a handle and a nice shoulder strap.”
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I used to coupon, but I haven’t found it to be helpful as I’ve gotten older. My tastes have changed. I use a lot of organic or fresh products, whole grains or I buy generics. It seems the coupons are mostly for junk food or brand name food, which if I buy the generic I can get just as cheaply without having to work around a coupon expiration date. Anyone else have this experience? I have an accordian file I like, but I find couponing mostly a waste of time and they expire before I ever use them.
We found a great idea for getting coupons clipped and what to do with the money you save…use it to give your kids extra money! Have them clip and organize the coupons. Whatever you save on your purchases is how much they earn. The rule has to be that you would buy that item anyway. http://www.chicaandjo.com/2009/08/18/neat-idea-for-kids-allowances/
That’s a good idea.
A community member shared a similar tip but it was using money saved by her family’s effort of saving on the electric bill.
http://www.frugalvillage.com/2009/03/29/motivate-kids-to-save-energy/
I love couponing…I save anywhere between 50% to 100% off my stuff it’s not just about buying food it’s everything I use in my house…and I am not a stay at home mom I work over 50 hours a week with 2 boys under 3…we go on a awesome vacation with all the money with save…I spend about $50.00 a month on everything I use and eat in my home. I don’t believe it is a waste of time.
I’m with you, Leslie. I shop at WalMart and buy the SuperSaver brand, which is just as good as name brand and is 99 and 9/10 percent of the time cheaper. I rarely buy “junk” or packaged food, so don’t need many coupons. Since there is just two of us, couponing is mostly a waste of time for me, as well.
I love using coupons. My mom most of the time, gives me the ones out of the paper. I print them online a lot also. But as with Leslie, I don’t use A LOT of them. My husband does more. He likes a certain type of cookies and will use the coupon if there is one. No coupon/discount no cookies. We get a discount at the grocery store buying the store brand, because he works there…so that is usually how we go. Albertson brand mushrooms are the same as Green Giant, but cheaper. If the kids want an extra treat/snack, I teach them to pick store brand with the sale sticker on the rack. They don’t mind either.
To the above skeptics:
The trick to couponing is matching up coupons with sales to get items for free or almost free. If you know what you’re doing, you can get the healthy foods you’re already buying at the store much cheaper. I mostly use coupons to buy health and beauty products, household products, and staples like canned and frozen vegetables, whole grain staples, fresh dairy, and lean meats. Not every coupon is for CheezWiz! Perhaps one day I will make enough money not to rely on coupons, but as it is my grocery budget is miniscule and couponing is the only way I can keep my husband and myself fed!
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