Getting My Grocery Coupons Organized

Ok, so you started clipping coupons and you have all good intentions on getting these things organized, coming up with a system and sticking to it - right? For me, good intentions - abolutely; organized - absolutely NOT! I've been clipping my coupons and searching, downloading and printing them from all sorts of websites. Now here I sit with these beautiful piles of coupons and not a clue as to how I'm going to organize them. Where do I start? This feat lands squarely in my "tedious" category and I'm not quite sure how I plan to tackle it. Back to the internet to search around for the best way to organize. Everyone has their own way of doing it and I, need to find my own way also. I'm sure this will be trial and error, but I plan to post each and every step right here!

First I want to back up a second and talk about the actual "clipping of the coupons". There are quite a few ways you can do this:

Don't clip them until needed: You can choose to save the entire newspaper insert or sales ad and store them in a large notebook. Remember, when choosing the container you plan to use to organize, you need to take into account the room needed for inserts. Personally, I won't be doing this. I want to be organized from start to finish and don't want to be stuck with 2 months worth of coupons that haven't been clipped, only to go back and see that there were actually coupons in there I could have used.
Clip the coupons you plan to use: You can sit down with the inserts and clip out only those that you or your family will use. This will take some time because you will need to look at each and every one of them. But if you are very brand loyal, this might be the right way to go.
Clip them all: This is my plan of attack for a couple of reasons. (1) It just seems easier to allot a specific time to sit down with all your coupons and cut - like when you are watching tv, or sitting at one of your kids sports practices. Its mindless work and you really don't need to concentrate very much - except on the scissors! No running with scissors! (2) Since I'm a member of FreeCycle, there may be people on there that could use some of the coupons I don't need. Like diapers and other baby products. I'll just offer them up to someone! Believe me, there is someone that can use them and its like throwing away money - I don't want to do that anymore.

After I decided that I would be clipping them all, I purchased a cheap little organizer on clearance at Target on Saturday. I wanted the accordian file type where I can choose to alphabetize by store, department or brand. I can then further organize within the tabs with envelopes or ziplock bags. This is my plan and we will see how it works! Here are some of the other options for organizing that I found:

Baskets: Some people use small baskets to organize them. You can find cheap 4x6 or so baskets at a dollar store OR they have plastic organizers with drawers. That would be handy also.
Shoeboxes: Something that most people have lying around! These would work great for organizing if you used tabbed index cards between each section. At the very least, you could use a shoebox to stack your coupons in as you are clipping.
File (4x6) or recipe boxes: You can pick these up at a dollar store also and most of them come with blank index tabs. Since I plan to clip a lot of coupons, I didn't think this was the best route for me!

So now I have my coupons and my organizer - how am I going to organize it all?! That is my task for later today and I'll fill you in on it tomorrow. Until then, here is your quote for today:

“Organizing is what you do before you do something, so that when you do it, it is not all mixed up.” Appropriate, huh?

Happy Tuesday!