One thing is certain – no matter how diligent a person is in collecting and clipping coupons, unless those grocery coupons are organized, they do not do any good! Here are some great coupon organizer options.
Coupon Wallets and Accordion Folders
Little coupon wallets are a great coupon organizer to start with, especially for those new to using coupons. Simply label each section according to the type of food (e.g. canned goods, frozen foods, etc.) or by brand, alphabetically. For example, if the first section is for brands that begin with A to C, then Campbell’s Soup coupons would go into that particular section, and so would Alpo dog food.
Accordion folders, which can be purchased at the local office supply store, can be used in the same way, but they are larger and can therefore hold more coupons than a traditional coupon wallet.
Use a Recipe Box With Dividers to Organize Coupons
Recipe boxes with dividers are used in a similar fashion as coupon wallets. They work well as coupon organizers for the following reasons:
First of all, recipe boxes are sturdy. They used to be made out of metal, but nowadays they are most often made out of sturdy plastic. A recipe box can last for years, unless it’s treated poorly.
Secondly, recipe boxes can have a lot more categories than a typical coupon wallet or accordion file. Typically a coupon wallet will have around eight categories, an accordion file will have 12, and a recipe box will have 26 (one for each letter of the alphabet).
The plus to having more categories is that fewer coupons are filed in each category, which makes it easier to find coupons. However, some people get frustrated or confused with so many categories or may find that it takes a bit longer to file the coupons when there are so many categories.
A recipe box is very flexible and can easily be adapted to suit individual preferences.
Use a Binder with Baseball Card Inserts to Organize Coupons
For visual people who need to see coupons easily in order to find them, making a coupon organizer out of a binder with baseball card inserts can’t be beat.
Pick up baseball card inserts at a local hobby shop, put them into a binder, and put the coupons into them in whatever order seems most logical. Organizing coupons alphabetically or by brand are both excellent choices.
Larger coupons don’t fit well into baseball card inserts. Photo album sleeves can be used for larger coupons.
Make a Coupon Organizer Out of Pencil Pouches
Pencil pouches, the type that go into a 3-ring binder, are perfect for coupon organization for those who have a good number of coupons and don’t want a super detailed filing system.Organizing coupons by category is a good way to go when using pencil pouches because it’s hard to put more than a dozen pencil pouches into a single binder.
Three-Ring Binder With Document Protectors for Coupon Organization
This option is only good if those who choose not to clip coupons at all and instead rely on a service such as Coupon Mom or The Grocery Game because each of those services list the date and insert (e.g. Red Plum) where particular coupons are found, which makes clipping and filing them ahead of time unnecessary.
The upside to this particular method is that it saves a lot of time, since clipping and filing are not required. Also, searching for expired coupons is not required – when the section of coupons are about four months old, simply toss them, as most, if not all of the coupons will have expired by that point.
Those who clip coupons and have a good way to organize them are likely to be successful in obtaining cheaper groceries. Recipe boxes, accordion files and pencil pouches are three of the many options for organizing coupons.
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