PICTURE: To the left is my Price Comparison List, Center is my grocery list from E-Mealz, Top right my calculator has a flip top making it easy to hook on the binder.

I used my coupon binder for the first time Monday evening. I was a bit nervous carrying it in, but it was late in the evening so there weren’t many shoppers.

Here are some thoughts:

• Don’t pull coupons out before you get to the store.
• Turn the pages of your binder as you go to that section of the store.
• Pull out the coupons you want to use and place them in an envelope or I just put them in the binder’s back pocket until checkout.

Overall, I liked the binder. It was easy to look up my coupons. It made it easy to mark out things on my grocery list since I had a hard surface.

Downfalls, it is a pain to have to cut the coupons so small or fold them to fit. I was thinking that I would only cut one set of inserts each week and leave any others whole unless I needed to buy more than one of that item. However, as I think about that it scares me that I will not have all the coupons I want with me and I don’t want to carry unclipped inserts around all the time. Another option would be to clip one set small enough to fit in the binder and then clip the others regular, but put them in an envelope or page protector. What do you all think? I am going to have to think more on what will work best for me.

If you haven’t read my first post about binders see it here!

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A common issue when you start couponing is how to organize and have coupon storage. Well, I have completed my coupon binder! It took some work. I am a bit apprehensive about using it, but my next grocery trip won’t be for another week so I have time to prepare! If you read my post about organizing you know there are different options to get your coupons in order.

So for my binder I had to go cheap since I wanted to get it put together ASAP. I found things around the house and a few from my parents house :)

2in Binder
Notebook dividers with tabs
3-4 pencil holders (still have to get)
Full sheet page protectors
Baseball card holder sheets ($4.99 at Target for 30)
Optional things I haven’t added
4X6 Photo sheets or similar

Order of my binder:
• Pencil holders – I plan to use on for each store so I can put my list, coupons and any other specific store related items
• One Sheet Protector – for huge coupons and soon to expire coupons.
• Notebook dividers – I put these in order based on the aisles in my store.
o Produce
o Bakery
o Meat
o Canned/Boxed
o Baking
o Beverages
o Condiments
o Cereal
o Refrigerated
o Snacks
o Laundry
o Cleaning
o Dishes
o Household
o Paper/Pastic
o Baby
o Hair Care
o Oral Care
o Soap/Body Wash
o Shaving/Deodorant
o Beauty/Feminine
o Freezer
o Medicine
o Policies (to be covered in another post!)
- Has a sheet protector for each store
o Food Out
- Has a sheet protector with all my restaurant coupons
• In the back pocket of the binder I put this week’s Ads for each store. At first I was going to put these in a sheet protector, but it was too thick.

In between each divider I have baseball card holders. It will depend on how many coupons you have as to how many card holders you will need. I trimmed my coupons on all edges so they would fit into the holders. I put the exact same coupons (same item(s) and same amount off) in the same slots with the one that is expiring the soonest on the outside. I tried to keep like items together. For example in the Laundry section the detergent is together and the dryer sheets are together. This just makes it easier to look over what you have.

Some people use the photo protectors for larger coupons.

Be sure when you trim your coupons not to clip off the dates or barcode. I also was careful to fold any larger coupons so I wasn’t creasing the barcode, just in case!

Check out my thoughts on my first use of my binder!

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