AuburnChick's Adventures

One of the most important things when couponing is being organized.

The following is a post I wrote on August 11, 2009…shortly after I started couponing hard-core.

You know I have been enjoying my couponing.  The only thing I haven’t enjoyed is hunting for coupons.

Oh, not the coupons that are in the supplements each week.  These are kept in folders.

The coupons I’m referring to are the ones I print from the internet, peelies (the ones stuck to items on the shelves), and the ones that Queen Couponer (my mother-in-law) sends me.

I can’t tell you the amount of time I’ve spent over the last few weeks…hunting for particular coupons.

Oy!

So, I enlisted Chicky’s help…well…make that “bribed” her to help.

She was in charge of cutting each coupon out while I made the binder.  As she cut them, she organized them into categories…

That’s a whole lotta coupons, eh?  Can you imagine going through them one by one to find something in particular?

The day before we worked on this project, Chicky and I had gone to Hobby Lobby, armed with a 40% coupon, where I purchased a package of plastic baseball card pages.

I found file labels in my closet and wrote the names of different categories on them…two per label (one on the left and one on the right side of each label).  I used my paper cutter to cut a straight line through the middle of them.

I tried my best to alphabetize the categories, and I did a fairly decent job of it.

My original intent was to use all nine slots on each page; however, it didn’t take me long to realize that many of my coupons are long, and some of my coupons would be hidden, so I had to come up with another plan.

I decided to place labels at the tops and bottoms of each page.  I placed the coupons for the top labels in the middle slots.  This allows me to see their category names.  The bottom labels correspond with coupons placed in the bottom-most slots.  The coupons cover the middle slots, but it doesn’t really bother me because I can see those labels, which are at the very top of each page.

Another thing I discovered…you can only use one side of these pages!  Thankfully, my package came with a lot of pages, so I have plenty left over.

Here’s what it looks like when I turn a page…

I added four new categories towards the end of this project, so I just stuck them on the last page.  It bugs me a little that they aren’t in alphabetical order, but oh well.  I was not about to shift the labels and coupons.

All-in-all, this was at least a two-hour job.  I just know the time will have been worth it the next time I plan a big shopping trip.