Let's Talk Coupons - It's Not Scary I Promise!

COUPONING - this is typically a subject that you either like or don't care about one bit. I myself coupon but am definitely not a crazy couponer. I go through spurts where I do a really good job and then don't touch it for a while.

Lately I have been good about cutting them but terrible about using them. Plus my company removed things from people's computer's (ex: Coupon Printer) and has blocked downloading period  - boo! No more printing coupons at work - which I must say I know I shouldn't do anyway. I better go buy more ink for my printer at home.

I have a coupon purse that I have been using for at least the last year. It replaced the clunky plastic accordion one I had. It stays in my purse at all times - BUT - I forget it's there at times, put in the coupons I clip in it, oh and take out the expired ones too. I know I know shame on me.

My thought - There HAS TO BE a better way out there but I also don't want to spend a lot of time nor money on making this better. So I hopped onto Pinterest and searched "organizing coupons" - come on you know that's a place you search for ideas too!

I came across a Pin showing a coupon binder that was super cute. Clicking on the Pin it brought me to a blog - IHeart Organization  (crazy cute blog by the way with some great tips and ideas - check it out under my tab of "Blogs To Check Out"). The pin though was actually a featured post from another blog - Raising up Rubies.

Raising up Rubies makes some great points on how to utilize the binder to it's fullest. Also she lets you download the very cute coupon category dividers for free! Click Here to download them!

So the next thing I did was find an old binder I didn't need anymore, bought some durable post-it tabs, ordered some 9-pocket baseball card sleeves, pulled out my label maker and printed off the coupon category dividers on some card-stock.

Originally I put the dividers in the 3 hole punch, inserted the baseball card sleeves and put the tabs on the dividers. I quickly realized the baseball sleeves were bigger than the dividers and I could barely find the tabs - NOT going to work!

To fix this, I went and found some old sheet protector sleeves I knew I had laying around somewhere and put the dividers into the sleeves and replied the tabs - WALA worked perfectly.

Then I had a thought - these tabs are in 4 different colors - color coordinating!

• Blue = cold foods (yogurt, produce, dairy, etc)
• Green = all other foods (soups, snacks, pasta, etc)
• Yellow = beauty & health (oral care, hair care, band-aids, etc)
• Red = all other products (cleaning supplies, batteries, Ziploc bags, etc)

Next I switched out the tape in my label maker to black ink on white labels since it will work with the tabs and I use that one less - clear tape is my preferred tape! Printed everything out, cut everything to size and applied to the corresponding colored tab. Did I mention I also alphabetized the tabs too!

This past weekend I took my binder to the grocery store for the 1st time. I did feel a bit dorky bringing a binder into the store and I'm sure people thought I was "one-of-those crazy couponing people". It made it easy to look for what I needed so honestly I didn't care about what others thought. The best part was either did my husband and he was with me! 

The next steps with my couponing is to be better about planning - reading the sales flyers at the different stores each week and utilizing my coupons to their fullest capacity! But hey for now it's cute and when I like something I will definitely use it more! SCORE!

Does anyone recommend a website that does this for you? I have heard of a few but not sure which is the "good one". Remember if you have any questions/comments feel free to leave them below or EMAIL IT TO ME!

Cost Breakdown

$0.00 - Binder (re-purposed and old one that wasn't being used any longer)

$17.50 - Baseball Sleeves (box of 100)

$7.98 - 2 packs ($3.99 each) Post-It 2" Durable Filing Tabs, Assorted Colors, 24 Tabs/pack

$0.00 - Sheet Protectors

$0.00 - Divider Templates

$0.00 - Card Stock - already owned

$0.00 - labels - already owned

$25.48 - TOTAL

PS - The baseball sleeves are great! 1 coupon per sleeve and it's all organized. You can see what you have and when they expire easily. The only con I can find is you really can't utilize both sides of the sleeve because it becomes hard to read with a coupon on both sides. However I had the idea of using index cards (I think the big ones cut in half will work perfectly) and inserting them into each pocket that way I can use less sleeves = less pages! This will be phase 2 since I don't have enough coupons yet to use more than one side of one sleeve per category yet.