This is a guest post from Tiffany at One Deal at a Time!
Does your coupon binder look like mine right now? I hope not, but at some point they do need some TLC! My kids went back to school today so that will give me a little time to get it taken care of! I know some of you have kids home until Wednesday or even later, so you might have to wait until then, OR get them to help you!
** FIRST – I want to tell you something you already know… when you have a clean, organized binder or storage method and coupons cut out, life is soooo much better! When you need to go to the store and have no coupons to take with you ready, it is frustrating as you know that you are just wasting money. Start off the New Year by giving yourself the gift of saving money by being able to find those coupons!
Sadly, we have not gotten a lot of coupons in the past few weeks. This will make it easier to get everything sorted out though.
If you have inserts just piled around start by getting them all together by insert. OR this also applies if you get really behind in cutting them out.
Always start by cutting the most recent inserts out first. These can be the most import ones to get cut out for a few reasons.
- Have the furthest expiration date
- You are not yet sick of cutting and will cut out more
- None are expired
- Coupon matchups are currently out for them
I store my coupons 2 different ways. Each week I cut out 3 of my inserts (every coupon) and I organize them in my binder. You can see how I organize my binder HERE and how to make one. The other 6 or so inserts I store in a file box as whole inserts.
I label in big huge numbers the date that the insert came out. You can find the date by looking on the spine of the insert like in the picture above. Then I store them in the file box until I need a coupon and cut them out as I need them.
I started doing it this was because my binder was getting too big when I cut out about 10 inserts a week. Plus it was taking me too long and I was putting off doing it. If I can have at least 3 of each coupon with me in my binder I am really happy with that. If it is a HUGE sale and I have planned ahead I can cut out the additional coupons I will need and add them to my binder OR I might have to actually try and come back to take advantage of a deal if I don’t have enough coupons on me.
If you get too far behind get some help, or just start over! No worries just jump on in where ever you can! Last night I paid this little girl $5 to pull all the inserts out of the papers and sort them for me. It took her 2 hours, it would have taken me an hour, but sooooo worth $5!
I love this post! Thank you so much for this. About 3 years ago I was BIG TIME into coupons! I loved it! Started a blog and spent about 35-40 hours a week on coupons. I eventually burned myself out and put it up for 2 years! I don’t even want to think about how much money I wasted. I finally picked it up again this past year and now I have a better perspective. I don’t allow myself to get overwhelmed and I spend as much time on it as I want, not pushing it to the extreme. Now I teach coupon classes and show people ways of saving without going extreme. I only wish I had read your post 3 years ago! I hope it helps someone that is feeling like I was. Don’t give up, just back off of the couponing if you feel like you’re in too deep. Thanks again!
I just cleared out my binder last night and filed all the coupons from yesterday (Sunday). It felt nice to have it ready to go. Today I went to Walmart for price matching and it was exciting to have $200 worth of groceries for just $49. To make it even better- I came home with $90 worth of coupons to use for future purchases thanks to Colgate Total. Actually, I’ll be heading back again this week to get more free items from those coupons. By the way…I’m loving your site!
Question: What do you do with all your expired Q’s? Since you’re local, I would love to know where you send them. I have SO many that have expired from the last month or so. Just want to pick your brain as to wear to send expired one’s if you do. Thanksand love the comments on all the pictures you showed on this!
Thank you for this post! I never thought about doing this. I get very overwhelmed with having to cut all the coupons everyweek. I’m going to try this and see how it goes!
My problem is the actual inserts in my file cabinet… how do i know that all coupons inside are expired without going through months and months of inserts?
You should write the expiration date of the last coupon to expire on the front, as well as the date the insert came out. That way it will all be on the front and as you’re going through your cabinet and you see that expiration date has expired, you can just pull the whole thing without having to go through the entire insert checking for any coupons. HTH!