A Tour of My Coupon (and More!) Organizer

Frustrated with failed attempts to arrange my coupons in an easily accessible and visible system, I set out on the quest to find the perfect coupon organizer. I googled, lurked on blogs, and scoured search engines…but I still couldn’t find an organizational system I was happy with. Somewhere in my hunt, I read of using baseball card holders to store coupons. I tried it, but…my three-ring binder wasn’t so handy at making sure the coupons didn’t fall out as I traveled to the grocery store. And thus began the formation of “Keren’s Coupon Organizer.” (creative title, huh? I’m happily taking suggestions…) So, let’s take a tour of my less-than-perfect coupon organizer:

In the true spirit of couponing, I was even able to obtain all my supplies at no cost to me! I was able to get a Trapper Keeper at CVS, in which both my coupons and home organization information is kept. I like the Trapper Keeper over a simple three-ring binder because (1) it can be zipped up to prevent spills and (2) it has several storage pockets in which I can store scissors and other supplies.

I was also get page-dividers at CVS, and used them to divide my organizer into desired sections. The particular dividers I chose have pockets, which allows me to store items I’ll sort later.

Knowing that coupons would take up the majority of the notebook, I put the coupon section at the end of my Trapper Keeper. There, I subdivided my main coupons into 3 categories: (1) Grocery, (2) Household & Toiletries, and (3) Medicine & Pharmacy. (I used Avery Write On Tabs–also free from CVS!–to do this.) In this section I used plastic baseball card holder sheets to store the coupons, and sort them alphabetically within the sections. I leave some spaces blank, and when I get a bunch of coupons and have not more empty slots, I stick a new plastic sheet in between pages (so it’s not always precisely alphabetical.)

After the general coupon section, I store my CVS coupons. I use a combination of the baseball card storage sheets and 4×6 photo album (pictured) plastic sheets.

Following the CVS section, I have a space for “Specific Store Coupons,” where I use a combination of the above mentioned plastic sheets, as well…

and full page plastic protector sheets.

So there you have it-that’s what works for me! I’m interested in hearing about more ideas, though!

After I put my organizer together, I did stumble upon this coupon organizer: Mrs. A’s Coupon Organizer. (To learn about a special discount on Mrs. A’s Organizer, go here.) Though I probably would not purchase the whole system, I would love to eventually get some of their patented coupon holder insert pages, which I think would allow me to organize coupons more efficiently. But until we reopen our “extra’s” budget, I’m very satisfied with my current system!

Feel free to click on the picture below for more “Works for Me Wednesday” ideas!