Organize

My first post on organizing my coupons was a good way to start, but as I have continued on this journey for a month...I quickly realized that my expandable file folder method was not going to work for me after all.

I actually decided to take a stab at the dreaded coupon binder that all the true super couponers use.  I was hesitant to start on this route because I thought it looked foolish to carry around a binder like this.

Little did I know....I was the foolish one.

After 7 hours of clipping and organizing a month's worth of coupons, I saw the light.  The binder is a god-send!  I've gone out for some items since organizing the binder of manufacturer coupons (I still keep an expandable file folder for the store coupons for now as they expire regularly), and saw the utility in being able to find something quickly.

First thing.....purchase a BUNCH of baseball card holder sheets.   I bought a pack of 100 to split with my cousin thinking that there was no way I would be able to use that many.  Oh man....I think I'm going to have buy more sheets soon.  I only have about 5 left.  I thought I would be able to find them cheap on ebay, but it actually ended up being a lot cheaper to get them through amazon.  Who woulda thunk it!

Second.....make a list of the categories that I thought would work for me.  These are the ones that work best for me.  You can clearly customize to what works for you.

• Air Fresheners/Candles
• Baby
• Baking
• Breads/Cereals
• Candy
• Cleaning
• Condiments/Salad Dressings
• Dairy
• Deodorant/Razors
• Drinks/Sodas
• Feminine Hygiene
• Frozen
• Hair Care
• Health
• Lotion/Body Washes
• Make-Up
• Meat
• Pasta/Soup/Rice
• Pet
• Snacks
• Teeth
• Paper Products/Zip Locks/Garbage Bags
• Office

Now you're ready to start clipping and organizing all of your coupons into the predetermined categories.  Clip everything and separate them out into category piles.  I would recommend to clip everything at once as it will take you much longer to go through separate booklets one at a time per category (that's how I started) - big mistake!  This is no easy feat though.....this is a LOOOOOOOOONG process.  I'm just glad I have no kids or a spouse to take care of yet, so I could take as much time as needed at once.  For those of you fortunate enough to have little people and a spouse...clip everything and store it envelopes.  Then organize little by little until you're done.

Because I only have a month's worth of coupons, I used a 1.5 inch binder.  I'm sure that I'll eventually upgrade.

Lastly...I bought a packet of make your own tabs at Staples that I could attach to any page I wanted.  This helped eliminate the need for dividers which would have taken up room in my binder.  I used my favorite label maker to make the tiny labels needed.

And this is what the final binder looks like!