Couponing Basics to Extreme and Everything in Between Part 3: Organizing
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This is Part 3 in a series on Couponing Basics to Extreme and Everything in Between that even a very beginner can master this month. Today’s topic is on Organizing Coupons.
Whether or not you are trying to eat healthier, feed your family more nutritious meals, or just get that paycheck to stretch until the next paycheck we could all save a little money using coupons. My hope is that after you have learned and implemented my tips and resources you will be able to strategically use coupons as a tool in your mom toolbox to save your family money.
In case this is the first time you have came to my blog my name is Shannah Holt and I’m a mom of 8 kids (and 8 furbabies). I’m also a SAHM that has homeschooled for about 15 years now, so living on one income and sometimes less than that with a large family I’ve had to learn the hard way how to stretch that paycheck to survive. I just want to share my tips so you don’t have to go through as much struggle as I have.
Here is a video from a live presentation I did on my Facebook page, but I did post a summary below. I do post tips each day if you would like to check them out here is my page: Fit Frugal Life Facebook Page
How many times have you cut out a coupon from the Sunday paper, got to the store to purchase the item and couldn’t remember where you put that coupon at? Yep been there myself a time or two in the beginning. Organization is a must when it comes to couponing or else this will happen more often then you want it to.
The first thing you need is something to hold your coupons in. If you are just starting out one of those little accordian style things you can get at Dollar Tree will work, but if you know you want to do more than the Beginner couponer than I would go with something bigger like a file size accordion thingy or a Binder.
A binder will be amazing for you to keep everything all in one place, organized, and out of little children’s hands. In addition if everything is in a binder you can grab it and carry it with you wherever you go.
In my binder as an Extreme couponer I kept my price book that I talked about in my Saving Money on Grocery series Part 2, coupon policies that I will be talking about in part 5 in this series , and a pair of scissors & pens.
Here is an example of my binder from Amazon
Case-It Binder
In this binder I keep coupon sleeves to put my coupons in. Now the reason I do this is because I get more than one of each coupon and I want to organize them into categories and easily flip through pages to find them. I buy 2 different set of sizes. The first set is the size of money so that it will hold the long coupons. The 2nd set is the size of baseball cards. Sometimes you can get the baseball card size at Dollar Tree, but I have found they are not offered at every Dollar Tree, nor all the time. Below is what each size looks like with a link to sets that give you a good amount for a good price on Amazon.
100 BCW 3-Pocket Currency Size Binder Pages
25 Single Ultra Pro 9-Pocket Coupon Pages
Some other things I use in my binder are sheet protectors (I got off Amazon for the best price) to put store policies & my Lingo Cheat Sheet from Part 2 in the Coupon Series.
I also use dividers to keep my coupons in different sections in my binder. You can find these fairly cheap at Walmart, but here are some for only $1 from Amazon if you are already placing an order anyway.
fi
I’ve also got pages you can print for tabs in your dividers. Get them here:
You will need to pick a day per month to go through and remove expired coupons.
