A Coupon Update

Hello again my friends. 

I hope you are having a splendid day.

Even though I am grieving, I have found today to be lovely.

Sunny and breezy. Seventy degrees outside.

The windows and doors are open in my house and I am in love with the weather!

I have been wanting to do a coupon update but I just hadn't been very enthused with the whole process lately. You see, I was using the binder method when I first started. I would cut the coupons to fit into baseball card pages. Keeping up with the binder was hard for me! I have 4 kids who want my attention too and a binder took me Hours a week to do. Plus, it was harder for me to find certain coupons I wanted.

Then I went to a full sized expandable file folder. I would lose coupons in the expanse of it and made it really hard to find them at the store if I found a good deal I hadn't planned for. So then I took a bunch of business sized envelopes and did subcategories and used them...It was still hard to find the coupons I needed. So I went back to the binder method. 

I got so tired of having to flip through all those binder pages of coupons. It took me forever to clean out the unused expired coupons each week and it took forever to put the freshly cut coupons in...Needless to say..I fell out of love with couponing but I had to do it in order to provide the necessities for our family.

So I decided that since I HAVE to coupon, I would find a method I like and that I could stick to.

Here I am going to take you through the process I use for my Coupon Box method.

First I buy my papers. On Saturdays, our little local paper has coupon inserts since it doesn't publish on Sunday. This is a super thing because Sunday newspapers cost $2.00 around here BUT this Saturday paper only costs $0.75. I save a $1.25 on each paper from the start!!!

Once I get my papers home I pull out all my coupon inserts, today I bought 3 papers so I had 3 inserts.

I open up all my inserts and match up the pages so when I cut my coupons out, they will already be matched up for me. Here you can see the big stack of coupon pages on the left and how I have matched up the pages on the right.

Then I cut all the coupons out of the matched pages. 

Then I put the coupons in my box under their correct heading and sub heading. The new coupons I clip go behind the coupons that are already in that category. That way when it is time to clean out my box, I just pick up the folder and the expired coupons will be right in front!

Here is an upclose picture. I made the neat little folders out of tabbed dividers that I folded in half and cut to fit inside my box. Easy peasy! I used my label maker and labeled each folder. Then I used index cards to add sub categories in some folders. I put a paper clip on one side of each of my folders so when i am at the store, I can just pull one out and open it up to look for a coupon for a deal I hadn't planned for BUT is too good to pass up.

After all of my coupons are organized, I gather up this weeks sales papers (Kroger and Rite Aid are missing from this pic) and I go through and see what is on sale that I can use coupons with to maximize my savings.

I make myself a list. I write the store, the item, sale price, the coupon price and how many of each I need.

Then I pull those coupons out of my box and put them in this little purse size coupon organizer. I have each store labeled.

Once all my grocery planning is finished I put my handheld organizer and my list in my box (along with my wallet if I decide not to carry my purse)

And I snap the lid on it and I am ready to go.

I do take my box with me when I shop because you never know when you will see a deal that wasn't advertised or you find an item on clearance you can snag really cheap with a coupon you have.

And there you have it. My coupon box looks huge in this pic but I assure you it is just a tad taller than a shoebox and about as long. It fits neatly in the child seat of the shopping cart.

I have been saving more than 50% on my groceries and household products using sales and coupons.

I am really happy about that but am shooting toward saving 75% or more.

I hope you have enjoyed my updated couponing program. You all should give it a try. It takes me about 30 mins to an hour to clip the coupons and store them.

I take a little time browsing the web for coupon matchups and looking at my local ads. But the savings are worth it.

Until we meet again

Be Blessed,

Erin