Day 3: Get Organized!
Sunday coupon inserts are piling up on the counter. Coupons litter the floor of you car. You know you saw a coupon for laundry detergent, but where is it now? Organizing your coupons will either make or break your couponing experience.
Introducing the heavy, the organized, the indispensible Krazy Coupon Lady Binder! There are two great and effective ways to organize your binder. Check out our video on Starting Your Binder.
Organize by Category
More time up front, less time shopping, and the most popular amongst Krazy Ladies polled on our website.
- Organizing by category requires a few hours of time each week to clip and organize all your coupons. I usually spend an hour to 90 minutes on a Sunday evening.
- Use baseball card holders (find at Target, Walmart, eBay, etc) to store the clipped coupons. You’ll need about 60 pages, and these run about $5 for a package of 30.
- This method makes preparing to shop quick and easy because your coupons are already clipped and organized. Plus, when you find a clearance item in the store, it only takes a second to flip to the right category and find the coupon you need.
- Download the Krazy Coupon Lady’s Printable Table of Contents and Categories for your binder.
Organize by Date
Less time up front, more time getting ready to shop
Don’t want to clip all your coupons every Sunday? Try organizing by date. With this method you don’t clip any of your coupons until you use them. A Krazy Coupon Lady will throw away at least three-fourths of her coupons, so this method saves you from clipping unnecessarily.
- Organizing by date requires a sheet protector for each set of inserts.
- Across the top of each set, write the date the insert/Sunday paper was published.
- Print the Coupon List from Pinching Your Pennies. (link?) This is an alphabetical list of all the coupons. If you run into a clearance item, you can find what week the coupon was published and flip right to it.
How to Begin Organizing – Both Methods
- Tear the inserts apart, page by page, careful not to ruin barcodes.
- Since you’ll have multiple copies of each insert, spread one entire insert out on the table. Follow by tearing apart the next insert, stacking identical pages together.
- Staple together all of page one, then page two, etc.
- Now, if you’re organizing by date, write the date on each stapled set and put into a clear plastic sheet protector. If you’re organizing by category, clip multiple coupons at once (careful not to damage bar codes or expiration dates) and slip into baseball card holders in corresponding categories.
Now your organization is complete, and you’re ready for the real fun: how and when to use your coupons. Come on over to Day 4: Timing is Everything.
