Coupon Lesson - Getting Organized

One of the most important aspects of being a coupon queen is organization. You have to know what coupons you have in order to use them. You should be clipping coupons from you Sunday paper and printing them online. If you see a coupon online, you need to go ahead and print it and not wait until you find a sale to match since some coupons don't stay out there very long. This can be overwhelming since you will end up with a lot of coupons! In the beginning, I just used a plastic divider. Not only did I have problems finding the coupons when I needed them but it was time consuming since I had to search through small piles of coupons over and over again. I have tried many ways of organization and have ended up with the binder method. This was recommended by some local coupon girls in our area and I have done well with it. You just need a three ring binder and those clear, plastic sheets that the man in your life organizes his baseball cards in. They make for perfect coupon holders! Divide your binder into sections such as Frozen, Refrigerated, Personal, Baby, Packaged, Breakfast, Snacks and Sauces, Breads and Drinks, Cleaning, Misc, whatever your heart desires. Once you clip a coupon, stick it in a pocket under the appropriate section. When you go to the store you can easily flip through your binder to find your coupons.

A second option for the Sunday paper coupons is to just label them and keep the in a file folder. If you notice on Southernsavers.com, you see things like RP 3/21, SS 3/14, PG 3/7. RP stands for Red Plum, SS for Smart Source and PG for Proctor & Gamble. The numbers are the date of the paper the insert was found. Once you receive your Sunday paper, you can pull out the Red Plum and write the date on it and it will coordinate with Southernsavers.com. When you see a deal you want to take advantage of, you just go to your file folder and pull the corresponding insert and clip the coupon. You may still need to organize you printed coupons but this lowers the number of coupons that you have to deal with on a weekly basis.

**If you don't have a newspaper subscription, most papers have a reasonable rate to receive just the weekend paper so that you can get the coupons on Sunday.

Good luck getting organized!!!