O.P.E.S. (Part 2): Briefing On Organization

Being organized is the key ingredient when it comes to being a successful coupon user and shopper. Like cement it's becomes your strong foundation to build on. Having this foundation will allow you to utilize your time more effectively with an increase in productivity. In addition, staying organized will prove beneficial to you on a personal level as well, by decreasing stress, you'll have more energy allowing you to plan your shopping trip with a focused mind and a positive as well as creative approach. That being said, allow me to share with you how I stay organized to help keep my savings routine stress free.

I'll go ahead and start by discussing how I manage my current household items and groceries. No I don't have an inventory list of every single item, but I would imagine that would be a pretty big list lol. However, I do try to keep my kitchen cupboards, fridge and other areas where various supplies are stored fairly organized. By doing this, I can simply take a quick glance and know right away what I'm missing or running low on that I will need to pick up during the upcoming shopping trip. This saves me both the time and the hassle of having to dig around trying to guess what it is that I'm missing.

I think it's safe to say that we all love coupons. However, there small size and fragile nature make them easy targets and sometimes wind up ruined or lost. If you don't have one already, I would suggest investing in a 3 ring binder and baseball card sleeves to make your own coupon binder. Simply use divider separator's to create your different categories of coupons and you'll have an organized and efficient way to keep track of and locate your coupons when it comes time to use them. I would also recommend using highlighters to highlight the expiration dates on the coupons. Using a variety of colors, assign each month to a different color. Doing this you'll know when a coupon expires with a simple glance, instead of straining your eyes looking for it. My coupon binder is great for storing coupons but I'll admit it's too much to carry into a store every time. After using the "accordion" style coupon holder it wasn't cutting it for me as it still took too much time to find the coupon I needed. I decided to create my own mini coupon binder to help keep me organized in the store. Before I go shopping I pull out exactly what coupons I want to use from my larger home binder and place them into this one. The binder is just a simple day planner/calendar I had found in my basement. I cleared out the outdated calendar but kept the notepad. To make the coupon holders I took the same baseball sleeves I have in my larger binder and carefully cut them into 9 separate sleeves. To make the backing for them I cut hanging file cabinet folders to size and hole punched them to fit in the binder. This way I had a sturdy backing for my sleeves. Using a glue stick, I glued each sleeve to the backing and was able to fit 3 sleeves per page. You can add as many pages as you need to in order to stay completely organized while you shop.

I do however still bring my larger coupon binder with me, but I leave it in the car. I benefit from by doing that in two ways. One way is if I see an item on sale that I need but forgot about on the list I can always go back to the car and find the coupon. That way I'm away from the crowds when I flip through the book looking for it. The second way is this prevents any impulse buys I may be tempted with. By having to go out to the car to get the coupon for the item in question, it gives me time to think about whether I really need that item right now or not. If I really don't feel like going back in to get the item I must not have really needed it to start with lol. Being on a tight budget this really helps me stick to the shopping list I have all planned out.

Here are the pictures of the Mini Binder I created so you can get a better idea!