With the Coupon Workshops that we have been giving all over town, the most popular topic question is Coupon Organization.

In our minds there are three levels of coupon organization:

1. Envelopes
2. Binder or Index Box
3. Advanced Binder or Index Box

Here are some tips for these three levels of coupon organization:

As a beginner, we would start with envelopes.

1. Create envelopes with store names on them and put the coupons for that weeks deal inside.
2. Create envelopes for product categories and take those with you shopping. You can use the product categories similar to the Coupon Swap; of course you may want to break down the grocery category to more envelopes.
3. You could also purchase a small cloth envelope coupon organizer but chances are that you will grow out of that envelope faster than you think. So we would go with the cheap way and use paper envelopes until you find your own way.

FFF Tip: If you tape the ends of your envelope, the envelope will last longer.

Binder System or Index Box

1. Using a cloth or vinyl binder with business card sleeves is a great way to get your coupons organized.  Using business card inserts is really handy to view the expiration dates. Folding the coupons so that you can see the value, product, and expiration date will make it easier when the coupons start to expire at the end of the month.
2. A plastic photo album with black or white pages would also be a great way to organize your coupons.
3. Use product categories to make labels for your binder or just place the coupons in the particular categories.
4. Using a index paper box with labels would also work as well. We were using this at one time but found the plastic box was too cumbersome for us to take into the store.

Advanced Binder System

1. Graduate to a large binder with business card sleeves, plastic paper sleeves, and pockets. We have seen some binders with baseball card sleeves. We purchase our business card sleeves at Staples.
2. We also use envelopes for each store, if we are going to make a quick trip inside the store. We place marked envelopes in the binder pockets.
3. Some stores will not have all the items we are looking for that we can get for free. We also keep a pocket to store our coupons for free items.
4. Using the envelopes as a grocery list is a great trick that works for us if we know we need specific items. We will pull the coupons from the binder inside that store’s envelope and look inside the envelope before getting in line.
5. We never felt the need to create a coupon database of the coupons we have in our binder (we would never have the time for that). But hey, what ever works for you go for it.
6. We do create a list of the printable Target coupons so that we can have a quick look at the competitor coupons we use at our Publix stores without having to cut and file these coupons (especially the ones with a short expiration dates).
7. We mix in the competitor coupons with the manufacturer coupons, the tear pads… in coupon categories so there is no guessing just a quick look if we can do a 2 or 3 way coupon stacking deal.
8. If there is a coupon that we have printed with a short expiration date we use the paper sleeves to store that coupon in the appropriate category. No need to waste time cutting if we are not going to use the coupon if there is not a sale.
9. Speaking of cutting, if you are buying more than one Sunday paper, staple the matching inserts together and do one cut.
10. We have created an OCF file (Only in Case of Free) that is in the back of our coupon binder.  At the time of the previous post we were using an index box. We now place our OCF file in the back of our binder. The OCF coupons are sorted alphabetically.
11. We have seen some that don’t cut coupons from the Sunday paper but place the inserts in a paper sleeve and date them. They keep a list of the coupons they have on hand, organized by date and publisher (RP, SS, or P&G). We have even seen a photo of someone’s closet where they keep the Sunday inserts on each shelf. This is a very interesting and creative way to organize coupons, but personally wouldn’t work for us.

We hope some of these tips have helped and inspired you to create your own system. As everything in life you will grow and find the best path that works for you.

We would love to hear how you organize your coupons and what progress you have made in organizing your coupons.

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This entry was posted by Frances on Tuesday, August 25th, 2009 at 8:41 am and is filed under Frugal Fairhope Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.