How to Organize Coupons

Once you get your coupons you have to find a way to organize them.  There are a few different ways to do it.

One method that is the easiest is to not clip just file them and mark them with the name and date.  On the righthand corner you will usually see the name of the coupons insert such as RedPlum, General Mills, Smartsource etc.  When you look at coupon match ups they will tell you where a coupon can be found (ex. 08/16 RP which means the insert that appeared in the August 16th magazine titled Red Plum.  Then you can just find your insert for that week, take it out and clip it at that time.

Another method is various envelopes marked by categories such as dairy, health & beauty.

A similar method is an accordian binder which is what I started using. 

The last and most involved method is a coupon binder.  Check out a tutorial on it here:
http://www.utahdealdiva.com/2009/09/my-coupon-binder.html

I am slowing converting to a version of this but I bought a photo album really cheap.  It is time consuming to convert and some times to maintain but I can now find coupons in a snap.  With my accordian some of the catergories were too broad and things were getting lost in the shuffle.  Because this is so time-consuming when I have lots of inserts I will file them quickly into the accordian file first.  Then when I am watching a movie or something I'll take out the broad categories and file them by the other method.  It works because even if I can't get to them all in that week, when I see a match up and I know that the coupon just appeared that it will be in my accordian and there aren't that many coupons in there only having one or two weeks stored there.  The months that I did have filed in there made it eventually hard to find certain things when the categories were too broad (and I only had so many slots so there was nothing really I could do.)

I do have individual envelopes for my stores.  Especially since I shop at Meijer's and Target and they have store coupons.  I keep the store coupons and the coupons for that shopping trip in the envelope.  Then  I can still bring my coupon book in the store to catch any clearance items and unadvertised deals.  So it works out.