Coupon Organization

I had a head banging moment this afternoon. After spending time yesterday clipping and organizing the 20 inserts my husband brought me home from Utah and the 10 my parents brought me home from Florida to get the 35¢ Duncan Hines cake mix coupons and redeem them at Tops today, I neglected to bring the Quaker $1 coupons. The Quaker is on sale at Tops until 4/4 for $1.50, reg $2.19, and after coupon these would be 50¢…. yet as I made my way through six Tops today – they only double 4 alike, and I will only do 2 alike orders so as not to draw undue attention to myself. I also use this time to hunt forms (that was a bust), and I make a loop from my house into the city to see my grandfather, take him to lunch, and then I take a different way home so I’m not really heading out of my way – I couldn’t help feel sadness that I didn’t have those coupons with me.

This predicament is one I’ve found myself in far too many times over the last 25 years. I decided to convert to the binder method of organization of organization in 2003 after many years of envelope-disorganization. Hey, the envelope-method (cramming all my coupons into a few envelopes and flipping through them in the store to find the coupon I needed) worked for a while. Only problem was it stopped working for me around 1989. My husband used the index card method in two Rubbermaid boxes when he was single. He separated them into food and non-food boxes and arranged the coupons alphabetically by category. It worked quite well for him as a single guy in Manhattan. Me? I had two binders separated into food and non-food binders, arranged alphabetically by category, clipped and sorted using 4″ x 6″ photo sheets, some CD sleeves and a few baseball card sheets with tabs to mark the categories by the time I met him.

We clearly were on different couponing levels.

My son went away to college this year. That meant the end of buying junk food – ok, who am I kidding? We have a direct-line-red-phone to Hershey’s and a direct-line-bright-red-phone to Keebler. Let me rephrase my statement to something a tad more truthful…. this meant the end to buying frozen pizzas, Totinos, Super Pretzels, Lay’s potato chips, full-calorie pop and half a dozen other high calorie, free-after-coupon items. We also joined a CSA click here for how to save money on produce, bought half a cow (organic) and split a pig with my brother and mother (another article at a later date). All this meant I did not have to grocery shop weekly. Heck, if not for milk, yogurt and bread I probably wouldn’t have to grocery shop for months. We have three stand alone freezers, one stand alone fridge, and a refrigerator/freezer combo.

When Armageddon hits, the entire neighborhood is heading to our house.

Here’s a few pictures of my basement stockpile in November. It hasn’t gone down much since the kid left.

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Sooooo, what did all this mean to my coupon organization? I borrowed a good friend of mine’s method and organized in stacks. I took it a little further than she does though, and I put them in file folders with weekly dates on the tabs. I also only get 30 -40 inserts a week rather then the 100s she gets (mine are from 5-8 different cities though), so I can have some semblance of organization. My list of 2009 Coupon Insert Coupons has been invaluable to know what insert what coupon is in. I can toss whole sets as everything useful to me expires too.

What is the best method? For organization hands down it is the binder method. You can see exactly what coupons and denominations you have, you can take the binder(s) into the store with you (I highly recommend bicycle clips to clip the binder to the cart so no one walks away with the binder. It never ceases to amaze me what people will steal), you never miss a markdown-to-coupon match-up, and unadvertised sales don’t require a trip home to get your coupons. The downside to the binder is the tremendous amount of work to update every Sunday.

The least amount of work is my current method. Basically label a file folder, toss ‘em in and leave ‘em. No muss, no fuss. The downsides are huge and pointed out in the first sentence of this article…. you don’t have coupons at the ready to take advantage of a markdown or in-store special.

I think these are the two extremes of coupon organization; the über organized and the er, umm, slacker (me, not my friend). The index cards and envelope-disorganization fall in the middle. At this point in my life I find I still crave the deals and will pursue them, I just donate a whole lot more. I also don’t sweat it if I don’t get it (I’m heading to Tops tomorrow for those Quaker snacks though ) and I think twice about buying anything that costs over free (actually about 25¢) if I don’t have somewhere to immediately donate the items we don’t use.

I wish you the best with whatever method of coupon organization you use. If you’d like to post details, links of input, it would be appreciated.

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