Smart Spending Coupon Organizer Inserts
May 27, 2009 by Karen Weideman
Filed under coupons, organization, product reviews, save-money, saving money
For quite a while now I’ve been using the same coupon organization system. I was using The Grocery Game to help me find deals on groceries. The Grocery Game tells you which week of the paper to pull the coupons from so that you don’t need to clip the coupons until you need them.
The filing system shown above a great system to use if you’re only using The Grocery Game. I definitely like the convenience of the system. The big problem is, I’m missing out on saving money on unadvertised specials, close-outs, and triple coupon sales. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve been in a store and seen an unadvertised special or close-out item. I know I have a coupon for the item, but since the coupons are not clipped, I have to search through all the inserts and hope to find what I need.
Finally I have switched to a new coupon organizing system!
I am now using the coupon organizer inserts from Smart Spending Resources. The coupon organizer inserts fit into a regular 3-ring binder which sits on your grocery cart allowing you to flip through the binder and find the coupons you need. A few things I like about this system from Smart Spending Resources:
1) The coupons can be easily viewed.
2) The tabs are neat and professionally printed.
3) You can easily find coupons you need for unadvertised specials, close-outs, and triple coupon deals.
4) The system is neat and keeps loose coupons under control.
5) The system is expandable. More pages can easily be added to each section as needed.
A few tips for those who are interested in this system:
1) Be sure to buy an oversized 3-ring binder. I bought a regular binder and I mine is slipping around on the cart. I plan to pick up a larger binder the next time I go to the store. It will make couponing so much easier.
2) I would recommend purchases extra insert pages.
3) You might want to consider buying a zipper pencil pouch for your binder. I purchased one and will use it to put coupons I know that I will be using or to store my pen and calculator.
As always, I try to provide an honest product review, so I will tell you that this system is a lot more time consuming than my previous method. I feel that the savings will be worth my time though. As I’ve told you all before . . . Time is Money but Money is Time.
Have you tried the binder organizing system?
top image (c) Karen Weideman, bottom image (c) Smart Spending Resources
I use a binder method and LOVE it. I use the baseball card holders for some of my coupons, but I mainly use the plastic holders that are meant for pictures. They hold 3 of the 4×6 on each page and I know it might seem like I have a lot of pages now, but I use those for the coupons I stack. It is hard to pull out anywhere from 2-4 coupons from one itty bitty slot, so it is much easier this way. Plus, they are on markdown at Wal-Mart right now and much cheaper than the baseball sized ones. I also keep plain old sheet protectors in there also for ones that I have clipped, but not filed yet. I get lots of compliments (and of course stares too).
I used baseball card inserts also. Just be sure to watch for wear on your binder. I’ve been having problems with the rings not closing correctly and have had pages fall out of the binder in the middle of my shopping trip.
They just wrote an article at http://www.slickbudget.com in their coupon section about organizing. Definitely an interesting opinion.