I’m not an extreme couponer, more of a “casual couponer” who prefers to buy things on sale than clip coupons. However, I do keep and use coupons that are directly mailed to me or given to me at the store.
In this video, I show you how I organize all of my coupons, gift cards, and gift certificates into one small binder that’s easy to carry in your purse or car. Plus, I show you what products to use so your small coupons don’t fall out and get lost!
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Video Details
Hi everyone. So in this video, I’m going to share with you guys how to organize all your coupons, your gift cards, and your gift certificates. So before I get started and show you my system, I just want to say that I’m by far not an extreme couponer. We don’t even get the newspaper or like any of the inserts for drugstores or grocery stores. I am more of a casual couponer where I only save and only use like the coupons that are directly mailed like Bed Bath & Beyond or coupons that you get at the store like when you go to Target or the grocery store, you always get coupons at the end with your receipt. I save those and then any other coupons that – I guess that’s really it. Yeah, things that are mailed and then things you get at the store.
How to Organize Coupons in a Binder
So, this is what my system looks like. I use a mini binder from Staples. These are the Better brand binders from Staples, Staples brand. It is the mini size, the 5-½ x 8-½. I like the mini size because it’s easy to carry. It’s convenient. You can carry it inside your purse or just bring it inside the car. It’s not like a big bulky binder.
And the inserts, I want to show you the inserts so you can see that nothing is going to fall out so you’re not worrying about like small papers falling out of the binder when they’re inside of your purse or when you bring them out into the store. So let me grab my camera and show you exactly what the system looks like.
So this is my mini size coupon binder. This is from Staples. I like how it has the window on the side so you can kind of write what the binder is. And then I put polka dot colorful scrapbook paper in the very front of the binder because it kind of just speaks to my personality and style.
Taking a look inside… So inside the binder, I have lots of mini-size sheet protectors. Now, it seems like pretty basic. Just get sheet protectors, put them inside the binder. But this binder actually took so much time to put together. I bought and returned so many of these mini-size sheet protectors because a lot of them just – the coupons would not stay in because they didn’t have flaps at the very top. They would just fall out when you turn the page, which totally defeats the purpose. It doesn’t stay organized and it was just a big mess.
How to Organize Coupons in a Binder
So, the ones that I found that worked really well are made by Martha Stewart. She makes three different size sheet protectors for mini binders. This is the 4 x 6 and then she makes business card sleeves just like this. You can do four to a page. And then she also makes full-page sheet protectors just like this.
It was important for me to have different size sheet protectors for the binders because coupons are all different sizes like there is the medium size, there is the small size, there is like the card size just like this, there is the ones just like that that you don’t always want to fold. So I don’t want to fold any coupons because I feel like once you fold them, you can’t really see all the relevant information. Like some of them are folded but all the relevant information is facing up.
So, sheet protectors in different sizes made by Martha Stewart… They’re sold at Staples. They’re only sold at Staples. All the Martha Stewart stuff is sold at Staples.
Categorizing Coupons
Now, what was kind of tricky was finding dividers that would fit this binder. So the Martha Stewart sheet protectors for mini binders are extra wide which means, they’re extra wide like this way. They don’t make extra dividers for mini binders which does not make any sense. Like even Martha Stewart makes dividers for mini binders but they don’t work with her mini-size sheet protectors.
So what I had to do was, get these tabs and place them at the top of the binder. These I think are made by Post-it Note. They’re from Staples. I think they’re made by Post-it Note. There are two kinds of tabs. I have to check. I think these are the Post-it Note ones.
Organizing Coupons in a Binder
But I just put these at the top. Now, I only have two categories of coupons, food/dining and then I have retail. Like I said before, I am more of a casual couponer so I don’t have very many. If you have a lot of coupons and you clip all the coupons on a weekly basis, you’re obviously going to have more than two categories because you’re going to want to be more specific if you have a lot of coupons but like I said, this just works for my needs.
All right. So dividers, labels, sheet protectors in different sizes. The last thing I did here was I added a background to each of the sheet protectors. Let me take this out so you can kind of see. Do you see it gets so busy? You don’t know which coupon is on top. And actually, I’m going to take out the next one too so you can kind of see more of what I mean.
So if we take out all these backgrounds, so we have all these coupons in sheet protectors, it gets kind of busy, right? Like you don’t know which coupon is on top and it’s just hard to read and see what you have. So I went ahead and I added construction paper. I clipped the construction paper and I put it in each of the sleeves so it kind of creates a solid background so you can just focus on the coupon that’s on top.
Now, that took a lot of time to do because you have to clip paper that’s all different sizes. All the pink for – pink is the food and dining section and then green for the retail section. These are all food. Now, there’s extra and then the retail, merchandise credit, coupons that you get after buying something, things that you get in the mail, this is from the mail, this is from the mail, this is from the mail, and yeah. And then you have the full-page coupons like Bed Bath & Beyond coupons. I have so many of these so I separated these into like the 20% off, these are 20% off. I split them up into two pages because it was too thick. And then this is the $5 off coupons.
OK. So that is all of my coupons. So as you can see, I don’t have that many coupons. It doesn’t mean that I don’t do bargain shopping. I always look for sales and browse the clearance rack and all that stuff. I’m just not really a big couponer and we don’t even get a lot of coupons in the mail. But the ones that we do have, this is how I organized them.
So one more thing I want to show you guys, so all of the pages have the flaps like right here is the flap, right here is the flap, like the business card size ones, the flaps are down here, up here. And then the same thing with the full-sheet ones, the flap is up here. So nothing is going to fall out.
So when your binder is closed and it’s in your purse or in your car, you can wiggle it around, bring it out in the store and nothing is going to fall out. So that’s kind of like the beauty of having that extra flap with the sheet protectors. And so you kind of see that I zigzagged the tabs up here with the name of the category so it’s nice and easy to read. If I would have put them like behind each other, it would have been I guess a little bit more difficult to read. But since they’re zigzagged, they’re nice and easy to read.
So anyways, that is my coupon binder. I hope this video was helpful. If you are a casual couponer then you might want to try this solution or you can checkout my video showing how to organize coupons by date. It’s working for me and it might work for you. I’ll see you guys soon. Bye!