Organizing your coupons:
Upfront, organizing your coupons might be a very time consuming task but in the end organization will pay off. If you have your coupons organized somehow they will be easier to find, easier to weed out the expired and will ultimately save you money. I know there are several ways to organize coupons according to experts. The first system is called the binder method. You will need a large binder and lots of the plastic pages with slots that baseball cards go in. In each section you will put like coupons and arrange your pages in the binder by category. Many times the binder will fit in the front of the grocery card and make for easy flipping in the store. The reason I do not have a binder is that I almost always have a child in the front seat of the grocery cart and the binder would end up laying destroyed on the floor of Harris Teeter and I know that it would not work for me. The second method is having a box and having it organized in categories and having the coupons within their proper section. I use this method and am in the lengthy process of organizing each section so that all identical coupons are paperclipped together. I have just crammed my coupons in their sections for years and am tired of having to pull out a jumbled crumpled mess to find that "one" coupon in the stack. I am hoping that this will make filing faster in the end too each week with the new inserts. A third method is to file the inserts by week in a file and then cutting specific coupons when you find those items for sale. The immediate negative for me about filing is that I drag my coupons everywhere in case I see an unadvertised sale (which are usually my biggest deals) and having them in files would lead me on a wild goose chase trying to remember which week a coupon came out. The last method is having your coupons pulled and in a pocket organizer. Again, that will only work if you know exactly what you are planning to buy and do not anticipate finding any unadvertised deals.
When I first started couponing I would put stacks in plastic baggies- frozen, dey, cereal, etc.... but one day a bag fell and poof! the coupons were allover the place and disorganized. I then went to an organized shoebox which I used for years without any problems. Then one day my third child picked up the box and dropped it on the floor at Harris Teeter and I almost fainted and then cried as I crammed them all back into the box and called the shopping trip quits. I now use a box with a snap lock lid. I had one cashier (a teenage boy) actually charge me $5.74 for the thing and it was full of coupons and junk. I had to go back the next day and get a refund on my own coupon box. Sometimes the box and I look ridiculous but I would not trade that thing for the world.
These are the categories that I have in my box (in order):
1. medicine
2. pet
3. cold-cheese
4. cold-meat
5. cold all other
6. frozen-meat
7. frozen-dessert
8. frozen all other
9. dry-coffee
10. dry-bread/cereal/breakfast
11. dry-dinner mixes (rice/pasta)
12. dry-snacks and misc dry
13. bottles/cans
14. shampoo/conditioner
15. soaps (razors,deodorant,lotion included but I need to re-organize)
16. toilet/facial tissue (remaining papers-plates/towels, napkins)
17. laundry
18. multi-purpose cleaners
19. dish cleaning
20. diapers/wipes
21. baby stuff
22. drinks
23. feminine hygiene
24. misc- everything else! air fresheners, plastic wrap, alum foil, trash
bags and junk
