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Organize Your Coupons – Frugal Friday Tip #12! If you want to save money with coupons, you must organize your coupons! Don’t miss these simple and easy tips that will help you keeps your coupons organized so you never miss a good deal!
You need to organize your coupons! Coupons are a blessing, and can be an awesome way to save money – but they can get messy real quick.
If you don’t organize your coupons, you won’t be able to save big at the grocery store – trust me. You will just have a hot mess on your hands and be super frustrated.
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If organization is not your strong suit, it’s ok – I can help! Organizing your coupons doesn’t have to be complicated and honestly there is no perfect system, but I do have a few tips to help you begin to organize your coupons.
Plan Before You Shop With Coupons
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Find Free Coupons
The best place to find coupons is from your newspaper – but that doesn't mean you have to pay for them! Share on XFirst, you need coupons! The best place to find coupons is from the newspaper. If you are anything like me, you don’t want to actually pay for your coupons by having a newspaper subscription, so you have to get real creative and find them for free.
One of the best ways to find free coupons is to ask your neighbors. Look outside early on a Sunday morning and see which of your neighbors gets a newspaper subscription and then go and ask them if they want the coupons in the paper.
Chances are, as a lot of your neighbors don’t use the coupons and would have no problem giving them to you! I have one really amazing neighbor across the street from me that has no problem passing her coupons over to me every single week! It’s awesome! Free coupons! Get creative and try to think of where you can find free coupons too!
Clip Out Your Coupons
After you locate a bunch of coupons, you need to go through them and clip out all the coupons you think you will use.
For some people, they like to clip and save every single coupon. For me, I like to save a lot of them, but not all of them.
Keep in mind when you are clipping out coupons, to clip out brands that you may not normally use, but are willing to try.
For example, let’s say you always buy a certain brand of shampoo, but there is a coupon in the paper for a different brand. Clip it out and save it. There just might end up being a sale on that new brand you’ve never tried and you can use a coupon to buy it and can get a smoking deal!
Clip out coupons from brands that you may not normally use, but are willing to try. Share on XIf you want to have maximum savings with coupons, you have to be open to other brands of the items you need. Matching a sale with a coupon is the key to saving money with coupons!
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How To Organize Your Coupons
After you clip your coupons, you need to organize them. I like to organize my coupons by category and use plastic tab dividers for your binder. Below are the actual categories I organize my coupons by, but you can use any type of organization you like most.
Some people like to organize their binders by the aisles in the grocery store, or alphabetically. I organize my coupons by categories that make sense to me. There is no right or wrong way to organize your coupons, as long as it works for you – that’s all the matters!
- Bread
- Beverages
- Candy & Gum
- Dairy
- Toothpaste
- Snacks
- Canned Goods
- General
- Baking
- Cereal
- Cleaning
- Laundry
- Paper & Plastic
- Produce
- Baby
- Frozen
- Meat
- Medicine
- Household Maintenance
- Office Supplies
- Pets
- Lotion & Soap
- Hair Care
- Razors & Deodorant
- Feminine Products
- Personal Misc
- Toys
Get A Coupon Binder
I have a zippered binder that I scored on sale right after school started from a school supply closeout.
SAVINGS TIP: Shop for a binder during Back-To-School sales. If you are reading this and it’s not Back-To-School time, then a few other places you can try are thrift stores, or the grocery store on the seasonal aisle.
I’ve seen a lot of binders in the store – and yes, some are icky, but Goodwill does contract with Target to get a lot of their closeout items and I’ve seen a lot of brand new items from Target in their stores.
I have purchased a binder from Goodwill before, and I got really lucky because inside was a ton of baseball card inserts – which are prefect for coupons! You just never know what you will find when you look.
Shop for a coupon binder during Back-to-School sales! Share on XBuy Inserts
Now that you have a binder, you just need to get some baseball card inserts to hold all your coupons. Populate your binder with 3-5 inserts per category (when you are just starting out, 3 per category should be fine).
Again, a great place to check is Goodwill or a thrift store. There might be a binder there already filled with a bunch inserts. Take a look around, and if you can’t find any that way, then Walmart, Target, Amazon, or any office supply store have them!
Some stores even carry specific Coupon Inserts – made just for coupons. I don’t like these very much because they are more expensive and they only fit 3 coupons per page. But, they are nice to have when you come across a really big coupon that doesn’t fit in the regular baseball card inserts. It’s up to you which ones you choose! Either way, get some!
Set up your binder and start adding your coupons by category. Once you get them all in there, make sure when you fold the coupons to fit in the inserts, that you can see what the coupon is and also the expiration date.
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Go Shopping and Save!
You did it! Now remember to take your binder with you every time you shop! You never know when you will come across a great sale!
I hope this helped inspire you to get a binder and start using coupons today! If you need help finding the time during the week to actually clip and match up coupons, you need to get my Daily Coupon Checklist freebie! In as little as 10 minutes a day you can This checklist will help you organize your week so that you do a simple coupon task each day, in 10 mins or less, to help you maximize your savings at the grocery store. Get my Daily Coupon Checklist by signing up below and I’ll email it right to you!
Other Frugal Ways To Save Money On Groceries
There are lots of other ways to save money at the grocery store! Check out these posts for more information on ways to save:
- Use Coupon Apps – Frugal Friday Tip #10
- Shop The Clearance Rack – Frugal Friday Tip #7
- Teach Your Kids How To Coupon – Frugal Friday Tip #5
- Planning Is Essential – Frugal Friday #3
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