Day 37: Keeping your coupons organized (& some tips for coupon shopping)

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Keeping your coupons organized can be a challenge… How do you keep your coupons organized?
I’ll tell you what I have done and what I do now.

I do like to use coupons, when I have time or when I think about it.
I try to use them every time that a store has Triple Coupons (triple the coupon up to 99 cents its value, so if it is a 25 cents off coupon, it becomes 75 cents) and super doubles (This will double your coupons worth up to $2 face value. This means that a $1.00 coupon will double to $2.00, a $1.50 coupon will double to $3.00 and a $2.00 coupon will double to $4.00!) This is how I get all of our toiletries & things for free! (If you didn’t see that post, check it out here- How to become a stay at home Mom on 1 income)

In the past, I had a binder with all of my coupons in it.  It was a ‘baseball-card-holder” type of binder…  a 3 ring binder with card-holder inserts.  I put all of my coupons in there, but the problem that I ended up having was that I would have too many of one kind of coupon.
So- they were all alphabetized, but when I would cut yet-another colgate coupon, I found that  I didn’t have any “Co” spots left (in my ABC order), so I would just shove it in behind another colgate coupon.  This worked out fine, I guess, but I liked to see all of them and not just some of them.

It looked like this:

The second reason that I didn’t like this is because it was SO time-consuming!  I was cutting out coupons every Sunday, plus printing them off every week from the computer.

So- I decided to go a much easier route:  I bought file-folders like this (notice the little hanging tabs on the sides that hook onto a storage box): and a file-folder holder like this:
I just organize them by date.  So, when Sunday comes, I take the coupons from the paper, put a post-it note on them (held in place with a paper clip) and slip it into a new folder (I organize mine oldest to newest so that when the older ones expire, I just take it, toss it and have the next one ready to go).
I also have one coupon folder ready for printed coupons, but now I don’t even print those until my favorite couponing bloggers tell me to print them.

I follow two blogs for this: Moola Saving Mom and Southern Savers.  When I hear about Super Doubles or Triple Coupons at Harris Teeter (a lot of stores do these, but this is my favorite one), I just pop over to their blog or FB page and see what I need to do.  They organize their coupons by date, so my couponing is ready to go when I keep it organized the EASY way- by date!  I just cut what I need at the time & that’s it.

Example:  If they tell me that I can get free toothpaste: It would say:  Free Colgate: RP, 4/3, .75 coupon
TRANSLATION:   RP (red plum coupons), 4/3 (March 3rd paper), .75 (75 cent coupon will triple to $2.25).  If the Colgate toothpaste is $2.00, I just made 25 Cents on this which will come off of my other items in my total.

Now- Which way would probably save more money?  Clipping & organizing in a binder (you can take it into the store each time, so you can catch deals that the bloggers didn’t see)
Which way works better for a Mom of four little ones?  Saving & clipping for one hour the night before a shopping trip!

 TIME TO SHOP: The night before I want to go shopping, I just cut what they tell me to & then I make piles of 20 (20 coupons per shopping trip is usually the rule.  If you go over 20, the store will only double up to 99 cents face value).

So- I clip them & put them into groups of 20, by category (frozen, breads, produce area, dairy, oral care, hair care…)  I combine the piles if I need to, to get to 20.  I then put a paper clip on each pile and put them into an envelope.
It is wise to take two envelopes because often they will be out of a lot of items, unless you get there at opening on the first day, which I never do.  And you don’t want to waste your shopping trip for ten coupons, if you really have 100 at home!  I usually keep all of my envelopes in our car, during the week of these sales.

I hope that helped!  Here are a few more great money-saving posts:

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