organizing your coupons; the file crate

So how do we get organized? There are so many different ways to do this, you just have to find what's right for you. I can give you some ideas, but it all comes down to what works best for you. When I first started out I had a small accordion folder that was divided into several categories such as; breakfast, diary, meats, snacks, baby and the like. The problem with this was that there were so many different subcategories I could have included that when I got to the grocery store I found myself shuffling through stacks of coupons looking for the one I needed.

After about 2 weeks of this organized mess, my sister suggested I not clip my coupons at all. 'Huh' was my first response, but then she showed me, as my two-year-old daughter would say, “la luz”.

This is what the light looks like. It's my coupon file box.

How this works is you get a $5 box crate from somewhere like Walmart, some file folders and hanging folders. I have two crates, one for each Sunday Supplement, which for me would be RedPlum and Smart Source. Since P&G doesn't rotate as often I use another method of organization for them, which I'll talk about later. So, like I said in my last blog, I usually get about 10 to 20 inserts a week. When I bring my inserts home I place them in a folder and file them in my crate in order by date, placing the newest ones towards the back.

Why do it this way, you say? When I do my grocery shopping I don't make my list based on what we want on a weekly basis. I stockpile by buying what's on sale for that week and use my coupons on those items in order to get the best, and lowest, price for them. Then I buy in BULK. This way when it's no longer on sale I won't have to worry about buying it at full price when I've run out.

I use websites like www.afullcup.com, www.hotcouponworld.com, and www.iheartpublix.com to do my research. My favorite of these being www.afullcup.com, where you can find forums on almost every chain supermarket and pharmacy you could think of. I do most of my shopping at Publix, which is a local supermarket found in the south. I check the weekly ads forum for my local store, which list the sales for that week along with any matching coupons available for that item. To make it easier, they also list where to find that coupon. For instance, if the item is Prego and the coupon is from the RedPlum insert that came in the March 21, 2010 Sunday paper, you will see something like this

Prego Heart Healthy Past Sauce, $2.69
- $1 off of 1 jar Prego, 3/21/2001 RP

Not everything that's on sale will have a coupon listed for it because not everything that's on sale has a coupon to match it. However, everything that is on sale that week WILL be listed in each posting. So, if this jar of Prego is on sale BOGO, that is Buy One Get One Free, I would use 2 $1 off coupon, one for the jar I'm paying for and the other for the free jar, and I now have 2 jar of Prego for $.69, or 34.5 cents a jar, but I'll get into this later

For coupons such as P&G, or store coupons, I used a 3rd filing box and organized them by store name, than a section for P&G's and then any Printable coupons I may have. Since I don't usually have as many of these as I do Sunday Supplements I don't need more than one file box for them all. Having my coupons filed this way made it easier for me to find the inserts I needed. Once my shopping list was done all I had to do was pull out the appropriate inserts, cut out JUST the coupons I was going to use and go shopping. The good thing about this was that it saved me time when I brought my coupons home. It also saved me from having to cut a butt load of different coupons that I might not get to use. The bad thing was that since I only had the coupons for what was on my list, if I found anything else on sale that wasn't listed in the forum, I was outta luck.

This brings me to my coupon binder, which I'll discuss in my next post. For all you newbies, filing is one of the best ways to start. Even though my method has now become the binder, I still rely on my filing crates. But like I said, I'll give more details later. Thanks for reading and please let me know how this helps. Also, I welcome all ideas, so don't hesitate to share.