{clip, clip…take 2}

Remember when I posted about couponing and coupon organization?  Well, my lovely, organized coupon box bit the dust pavement on Monday in the parking lot of the pediatrician’s office.

 

R.I.P. broken (and not as sturdy as I thought you were) coupon box.  Luckily it wasn’t a windy day and all of the coupons just plopped out onto the parking lot to soak in the sun.  So before I got little man out of the car for his nine month checkup (he’s doing fantastic by the way), I grabbed all my coupons and stuffed them into an empty Target bag that just so happened to be hanging out in the back of my car.  You can never have too many Target bags!

When I got home I put all the coupons on my kitchen desk until I figured out what I wanted to do with them.

Ugggghhh…that sight just makes me anxious.  All my hard work alphabetizing….wasted!

I decided that it was time for a new system (again).  My coupon box was getting a little too full, and it made it hard to find exactly what I was looking for most of the time.  I did some research on a few of my favorite couponing websites including this one and this one and decided to make the switch to the most organized binder I’ve ever seen in my entire life courtesy of The Krazy Coupon Lady.

She has two methods for coupon binder organization.  One method is to buy a HUGE binder (I’m talking 5-7 inches my friends) and organize the full sheet of coupons (no clipping) by date.  That way when sales come along you can use a coupon site, such as The Krazy Coupon Lady to find specific coupons.  This method didn’t really match my couponing style, so I went with her second type of binder organization.

The binder I chose to make is organized by category.  She even has an entire PDF you can download to use in assembling your binder.  To set up a coupon binder, organized by category, you’ll need:

• 1 1/2 or 2 inch binder
• 40-50 sheet protectors (letter size)
• 50-75 9 Pocket sheet protectors (I found mine on Amazon—100 ct box for $12.49)
• label maker
• index dividers
• coupons 🙂

Luckily I had almost everything I needed to get organized on hand and only had to purchase the 9 pocket sheet protectors!

Category Dividers (download the free PDF here, courtesy of The Krazy Coupon Lady) & Sheet Protectors

9 pocket sheet protectors (found on Amazon)

Label Maker (I’ve had this for over 6 years.  It was a “congratulations-on-becoming-a-teacher!  Trust-me-you’ll-need-this!  Gift :)”  I think I’ve used this more in the past few weeks than I ever did when I taught!  But it’s a great gift nonetheless!

Obviously I already had all of my coupons clipped, so I began with setting up the binder first.  You can watch this video of The Krazy Coupon Lady showing you step by step how to organize your Coupon Category Binder.  She also shares how to set up the Organized By Date Binder as well.  I found this video to be very helpful in setting my binder up, but also included some of my own ideas in my personal binder.

For each tab, I used my label maker to make the following tabs: Coupons, Shopping Lists, Store Ads, Meal Plans, and Receipts.  As I mentioned before when I discussed coupons here, you’ve got to save the store ads each week if you are seeking a price match at stores that honor competitors advertised deals.  Just hold on to them for the week, trust me, it’s worth it!  The Shopping Lists section is handy because I’ve turned into a multi-store shopper.  I go where the best deals are, and that sometimes means travelling to a few stores a week.

All coupons are organized by category behind the Coupons tab.  At the very front of this section is an Index of all Categories.  So if you don’t have the categories memorized, simply find the category, the corresponding number, and flip to that section, for easy coupon finding!  Each category has a header page that I inserted into a letter sized sheet protector, like so…

I like how most categories have sub-categories listed as well (in case of confusion)!

After each header page, I put 2-3 of the 9 pocket protectors behind those.  Now I can easily see all of my coupons in each category simply by turning through the binder!

Baking Coupons

Baby Coupons (I can never have too many of these)!

I always take my coupon binder with me when I leave the house.  Remember, your coupons are doing you no good sitting in your house!  I will say that before I venture out to stores, I really research what I’m buying, the coupons I’m using, and the money I’ll be saving.  I pull all the coupons I plan to use ahead of time and attach them to a shopping list for each specific store.  It’s nice to bring the whole binder in with me however, in case I stumble upon a sale that I didn’t read about ahead of time!

So far, I’m very happy with my new coupon binder!  Let me know if this method works for you 🙂

I’ll be linking up today…

 

 

I’ve also been featured again by Kelley @ The Grant Life!

 

 

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