Wednesday, January 6, 2010

Video Blog - Organizing your Coupons



I get a ton of questions about how to organize your coupons. In this clip I show how I keep my coupons in order and from taking over my office! Everyone is different but this method works best for me. It's easy, inexpensive, neat and doesn't require any fancy products. This clip is from a series of videos I did for TVLesson.com. These videos are filed under the "Getting Started" area of the site. Enjoy!

7 comments:

ClippingChix said...

How do you know when you can throw a packet out because all of the coupons in the packet have expired?

Christie said...

I will usually go through old inserts once they are about 3 months old. Then I'll throw out all the old coupons in the insert.

I leave the front cover on so I can still see the type of insert (SS or RP) and the date and just leave the still valid coupons inside. And I'll write in the corner when the last coupon expires so I know when to totally throw that insert away.

The P&G inserts usually have the same expiration date for most or all of the coupons inside so those are really easy to manage.

Unknown said...

What if you need something random how do you know where to look for that coupon at? For instance if I need sandwich meat for my kids lunchboxes and it is not on sale this week and listed on your website how do I know where to look for that coupon using your file system.

Christie said...

Hi Jill,

Sure, happens all the time. I just go the coupon database at...

http://www.hotcouponworld.com/forums/coupon.php

I put in Oscar Mayer or whatever meat my kids like and it tells me what coupons are out there. So in this case it tells me that there is a coupon for Oscar Mayer Cold Cuts, $1/2 in 12/13/09 SS.

I go to my binder, look it up, cut it out and put it with the rest of my coupons for todays shop. Viola, 30 seconds and I'm all done!

Anonymous said...

Thank you for posting this!! I am new and have been spending hours clipping and stuffing and it's not too fun anymore...I plan on using your system!!

Christie said...

Hi Twinsfan - I did that too when I started out and I could never find anything and when I did it always took forever. Plus I can buy 6 papers in a really good week so that's a lot of clipping! I just remember having little pieces of paper everywhere. :-)

Now I only keep a traditional coupon binder (you know the ones labeled "bread", "dairy" that kind of thing)for the coupons that I will rip off tearpads or get out of the blinkie machiines. All my newspaper inserts stay intact.

Of course there are 100 ways you could do it, this is just the way I chose and it has worked well for me. They sell coupon "organizing systems" but I'm just too frugal to buy one! I got my 3 ring binders FREE at CVS during their back to school deals!

Kelli said...

I used to clip every coupon from every insert. In the beginning I was getting 1-2 papers per week. I'd spent hours and hours cutting out coupons and I never used about 2/3 of them (I don't have a baby or a pet, so these coupons are mostly useless to me, but I still clipped them).

Now, about 9 months later, I'm still trying to figure out what's best for me. I don't have a coupon binder that I carry with me at all times like I know a lot of super couponers do. For the most part, I go through ads and plan my shopping trips to the penny. I (almost) never buy anything that isn't on my list, unless I happen to find a really good clearance deal. I used to shop almost exclusively at Walmart because I thought that that was the best way to get the best prices... now I maybe go there one a month, which really helps out with the unneeded/unplanned purchase.

One thing that I do is when I'm looking through my coupon inserts for each week, I'll cut out a few coupons that I know I'll use. Otherwise, my coupon interest stay together. It's much easier that way.