My Coupon Binder♦

My coupon binder… trusty old friend. Always there for me, through thick and thin. She has seen me through many a sale and has saved me a ton of money!

There are a number of ways to organize your coupons. I have a friend who does a great job using boxes and never seems to miss out on a deal. I’ve been using a binder for around the past nine years and couldn’t live without it. It takes a bit more time to file the coupons, but I would rather take that time at home relaxing in front of the TV to be able to quickly flip through the pages in the store.

Setting up your binder is a personal preference and it may take trial and error to figure out what works best for you. This is what you will need and how I have set up mine:

A Binder – the zippered binders work great on keeping everything secure (especially if you drop it!) but I found that I never quite closed it up and the ring was too small to hold all the pages. Right now I use a 4” heavy duty D-ring binder that works perfect for me.

Baseball card sleeves – these can be found at Walmart or Target, usually with the photo albums. The Dollar Tree also sells them, but I found that they wear out very quickly. Others also use the sleeves that go in photo albums for the larger size pockets. I find that if you just fold the larger coupons, they fit fine.

Dividers/Labels – You will need some way to divide the sections of your binder. You can use the standard binder dividers or I just place labels on the bottom right hand side of the page. This way I just flip up the corners to find the section I’m looking for and I don’t have additional pages to bulk up my binder.

Dividing into sections – Some people file the coupons alphabetically, by expiration date or by category. I’m a category kinda gal (cereal, cookies, dairy, etc). By doing this, when I go to a section of the grocery store, I plop open my binder to that category and I can easily compare what is one the shelf to the coupons I have available.

Supplies – A 3-ring zippered pencil bag works great to hold supplies like a calculator, pencil/pen or the coupons you will be giving to the cashier on your shopping trip. Plus there is an endless supply of organizing items on the school supply isle. Again, it’s what works best for you, be creative!

The most important tip is to keep your coupons with you. My binder stays in my car just in case I run into an unexpected sale!