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Monday, February 8, 2010

Mystery Monday: Coupon Organization (Teri)

If any of you visited us clear back in October, you may remember this post, where I talked about saving money on groceries. If not, go back and read it, see if any of the tips would work for you, or if you have any more for us. Today I’m going to share with you how I organize my coupons.

In this post I shared with you that I use a website called Pinching Your Pennies to help find the “deals”. There are many sites out there to help you know where to find the best deal on things you buy, but I like this one the best for a couple of reasons, first off, it’s FREE and who doesn’t like that price. Secondly, they have teamed with Grocery Smarts to make a customizable printable grocery list of deals. With this system I also get multiple Sunday papers, thus getting multiple sets of ads (I get 3). This requires that I organize them so that I can find them. Thus my coupon crate.

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I know you are wondering why you would need an entire crate to organize your coupons. The reason being is because I don’t clip them, at least not until I’m ready to use them. The way the PYP website works is that it tells you what is on sale, how good of a deal it is, and where to find the coupon you need for this item. I save my coupons for 5 months (If you count, you’ll know I don’t have 5 months worth, my dh threw about 3 weeks worth away because they were causing clutter….I could have throttled him), then I toss them, by this point they will all be expired. As you can see I have multiple categories.

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Everything behind the Smart Source tab is that type of insert, ditto for Red Plum, General Mills and Proctor and Gamble, these are your “brands” of inserts. I also use printed coupons, and I print the ones I will use when I see them, and them I save them for when I need them. If you want a good tutorial about how to use your coupons, how to read the website, etc, go to the Utah Forum on PYP and they have some great tutorials (not sure if the other states do or not, but the same general principles that apply in Utah will apply elsewhere as well). It’s great for beginners (and seasoned couponers as well). Each week of coupons is put in it’s own sheet protector to make it easy to pull out all 3 inserts together.

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I write the date the insert came in sharpie on the upper right hand corner of each insert so that I easily spot what weeks coupons I’m looking at.

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After I have made up my shopping list and printed it out, I clip/print the coupons I need and fold them inside the list and put them in an envelope to take with me. It may not be a perfect solution, but it works for me (I pretty much copied my friends organization, so it’s not even an original idea……THANKS SUNNIE!!!) If you want more tips on saving on your groceries, click here to take you to my post from October.

I also have folders for restaurants, stores and services (things in here range from Children’s Place % off coupons to ones for oil changes), and one for clipped coupons which doesn’t have anything in it right now.

So I guess today’s mystery is:

Do you have a coupon organization system that works for you?

Linked to:

Favorites Linky Party @ They Byrd Nest; Frugalicious Friday @ Finding Fabulous