How I organize my coupons

Ok, so about 2 years ago I decided to be a couponer. My DH and I had ordered the paper out of pity from a middle school student who had been going door to door in frigid weather and we had past sunday papers piling up everywhere. I took all the inserts out and got my coupons together.

At first I did the binder method. I had bought baseball collector sheets ages ago for my class and I had about 50 of them left over. I put these in the binder and separated them with old dividers I had used in my college classes. I had them separated into different groups: Meat, Healthcare, Beauty, Boxed goods, Canned goods, Frozen goods, Dairy...

I then would put the coupons in the appropriate place and that was that. Well... that method and I didn't get along very well. It caused some serious downtime for DH and I when we went out because he'd be flipping through the binder, not really understanding how it was set up, and I'd get so aggravated with it that we'd end up coming home pretty angry about the whole experience.

So I ordered them by aisle... and that didn't work out too well either.

So I alphabetized them. Let me tell you, alphabetizing coupons into a coupon binder that was already in alphabetical order SUCKED so I gave up on that.

I then resorted to...the box.

Now, my box (haha) isn't big. It's a small clear caboodle box I had been using to store a bit of makeup I don't use. I threw away the makeup (since it was like 10 years old) and created dividers.

How I start out cutting and organizing my coupons is this. I put the inserts on the floor.



Then I separate the pages within the inserts.


Don't mind the cat. Then I carefully hold the stack and cut out the coupons at once. After I've done that page, I then file it into my box.


And I thought this ad for a coupon was pretty funny cause apparently gamers have different hairs than everyone else....


As explained in Penny Arcade's comic.


Hope you enjoyed this post!