Crazy For Coupons! Part 2-Organizing

I want to help others spend less and get more, so I'm doing a series on getting started with couponing. You can see some of my other posts on couponing (Steps 1 & 2 and a couple stockpile pictures) here.

So you saved your coupons, right? Did you check out some blogs and print off some internet coupons? Now that you've got all these coupons, what are you going to do with them all?

Step 3: Organize! I have chosen to use a photo book with 4x6 pages to store my coupons, and it is working really well for me. Others use binders with baseball card holders, and I even ran into a mom in the store who used a large insulated lunch box! Look around your house and be creative and see if you can use something you already have before spending lots of money on a system that may not work for you. Do you have a photo book like mine in your basement? Try it and see if it might work for your needs. I divided my coupons into categories: snacks, breakfast, dinner, baking, toiletries, household, dairy/frozen, and misc.

Within each category, you can organize them in different ways, too. Some people organize by month of expiration so it is easy to purge their expired coupons. I find it easier to organize by type of product, so in the toiletries category, I have slots for toothpaste, deodorant, shampoo, lotion, etc. These aren't labeled as such, but I can see the type of coupon that is in each slot. Then if I see a sale for toothpaste, I can grab that pile of coupons easily.

I've been asked how I purge the expired coupons. At the beginning of the month, I take about 5 minutes to go through my binder and grab all the coupons that expired at the end of the last month. This doesn't take me too long because I can see most of my coupons with my system. If there are some that expire in the middle of the month, or some that I missed, I will grab those as I find them (often while I'm shopping I'll just shove it in my pocket to throw away later).

Would you be willing to share your coupon organization method? If you email me a picture of your system and tell me if it is or isn't working for you, I'll post it on my blog!