what a mess!!!

Now you've printed a bunch of coupons and hopefully cut them out.  You're planning on picking up your newspaper Sunday morning, and you're starting to wonder how you're going to keep all these little slips of paper together.  Well, let me tell you, one letter-sized envelope is not going to cut it.  If you're going to save more than a quarter here and a dollar there, you're going to need to get organized.  It won't hurt much, I promise.


There are, for the most part, two ways to organize coupons.  You can get the little pouch with dividers and tabs that you can label.  WalMart has them for a few dollars, or you can find something of a higher quality on ebay or etsy.

This first picture is one I found just now on ebay.  One convenient thing about this is that it latches on to your shopping cart.  It looks like this one doesn't have a lot of dividers, and you're going to need a lot more than three. 

This one I found on etsy.  It has 26 dividers, and it's a lot deeper.  Once again, it latches on your shopping cart, so it's easier to take in the store.

This next way of organizing coupons is a little intense. . . . But if you can convince yourself to carry it into the store, in my opinion, it's really the best way to organize your coupons.

This is a coupon binder.  It allows you to easily flip through and see every coupon you have, without having to sort through a stack of coupons in the grocery store.  At its basic, it is a zipper style three ring binder and baseball card sleeves.  You may want to a spiral notebook or a stack of paper to use for your grocery lists or as a price book (we'll talk about that later), folders to hold ads if there isn't a place in the binder for them, and a pencil pouch.  You probably will want to store a pair of scissors, pens or pencils, and highlighters or magic markers.  Really, though, the point of the coupon binder, or any coupon organizer, is to make it work for YOU.  Whatever helps you to keep this mess organized and functional.

Whatever you use, you definitely want to make sure it is something you can use in the store.  You really don't want to leave any of those babies behind because even if you weren't planning on buying the shampoo you've got that coupon for.  If you go in the store and discover that it's on sale, when you add the coupon to that sale, you could get it cheaper than you've EVER bought it for before.  And if you left that coupon at home, that's just too bad.

So start considering how you want to keep your coupons organized.  Start simple if you want.  Use the small organizer and if that works for you, great.  If not, try something else.  Like I said, just be sure it makes sense to you and is helping you get those good deals.