Organizing your coupons.

I have had several requests to post how I organize my coupons. I know you'd think I am highly organized, but I am not as organized as I should be. As I type, my wrists are resting on two small stacks of blinkies and sale ads, with a pair of scissors near my left arm and to the left of that a stack of printed q's. LOL.

This is one of those things that I truly feel takes some time to figure out what works best for you. I started out clipping. I did the binder thing with baseball cards holders thinking that would work. Then that got out of control because I never had time to cut all the dratted coupons. I started dumpster diving and buying multiple papers and there was NO WAY I was clipping them all. Plus, most sites with q databases list the location of the coupon and once you clip it, you don't know where it came from.

I went through several different cycles of different things and FINALLY I have things in some semblance of order. It’s not perfect. The drawback is that I don’t have ALL my coupons with me. So if something is on sale I may not have q’s for it. This is a bummer (CVS diaper clearance anyone?), but you have to pick and choose. Here’s what I do now…

1) I buy my papers and pull out the inserts. I flip through them to see what is in there. I have a pretty good visual memory and once I see it, I can usually remember it’s there. I may not remember the exact amount, but I know, say, “there’s a coupon for Visine somewhere”. I have three small filing boxes. Two are crate looking things and the other is a box with a handle that you can carry around. In the two crates, I have hanging folders and file folders labeled with the date and insert. Like, “8/30 Red Plum ” and so on. I shove the entire insert in the folders. In the other, I have folders with all the booklets I find.

2) Tearpads/blinkies/peelies, etc. I have a temporary holding zone for these in the form of a Huggies wipes box. It's convenient b/c it is a good manageable size and it sits on my desk. When I have coupons I ended up not using, I put them in there along with those blinkies.
I also have a binder I don’t use for my weekly q’s anymore and my GOAL is to get all these from the huggies box into the binder. But that hasn't happened yet. ;)

3) Printable ones are in a stack on my desk. LOL. I clip these when I think I’ll need them – otherwise they just stay there.

When I head to the store- I have an envelope for each store. I recently bought some zip-top durable pouches that kind of look like pencil pouches but without the holes and use those for taking my coupons to the store. (Found them at Office Depot) Over the course of several days, I pull the q’s I want to use for that sale and toss them in the appropriate envelope. As I create my actual list, I type it up and then print it out when it’s DONE. I then pull all the q’s and match them to my list. I sort them and make sure they’re all there. Then I put my envelopes in a gallon Ziploc bag so none get lost in transit. The bag goes everywhere.

When I am making my list, I use hotcouponworld's coupon database HERE to find my coupons. You can enter what you're looking for and it will list all the coupons available for that product.

As I said, the drawback is I don’t have all my coupons with me at all times. I have been known to put the entire bin in the car, just in case, but it is a major pain in the rear.

For events like Kroger triples, I get a baby wipes box and toss in anything that “might be a good deal”. Like $.75 coupons and $.50 coupons for items like hot sauce, etc, which I know might be freebies. When I get to the store, I just meander around looking at the q’s I have. It’s not organized, but I don’t have any way of knowing what’s on sale or what the regular prices are, since I’m shopping stores that are not in my area. The longer you do this, the better you'll be at knowing what "good deals" might be. {I would be AWESOME at the Price is Right these days!!!}

I will try to get some pictures up with this post tomorrow if I can find time. Meanwhile, I hope this helps some of you!