It's Couponing Time Again!

With the unexpected amount of travel I had for work the past three months, I basically stopped couponing. However, now that I've been home for a few weeks, I'm ready to jump back into the wonderful savings of couponing.

I spent some time yesterday cleaning out my binder - I basically have no coupons left!! I did some web surfing hoping to find some insert giveaways, but no luck. Oh well...I have the inserts from the past few weeks and hope I can find a few deals with what I got.

First Trip a Success

Last night was my first time shopping with the binder. It worked great! It's a tad on the large side, so it hangs off the edges of the shopping cart when open, but that was the only negative. It was great being able to flip through pages and see coupons, rather than having to pull them out of the box and finger through the entire stack. I need to spend some time this weekend refining a few things - section dividers, finishing filing, etc - but I hope to have the box fully retired by Monday.

Speaking of shopping - hubs and I did a Super Target run. Before coupons was $64, after was $29. I was expecting it to be a little lower than that, but we did pick up a few extras. On the way home, we stopped at Walgreens. Total oop was $3.02. We now have a three-wick Glade candle, another shower cleaner (being donated to church's garage sale), and some items for the Mom & Dad stash donation box.

Success all around last night!

Change in Tactics

I broke down. I just couldn't live with the box anymore. I bought a three-ring binder for my coupons. And, lots and lots and lots of baseball card holders. Spent way too much money, but I was bound and determined to fix my problem.

I think I'm going to go with a combination method. Since I get coupons from other sources (eBay, Coupon Clippers) I will always have clipped coupons. However, I am no longer going to cut the Sunday inserts and I going to use plastic page protectors to "file" them by date.

The neat thing (I think) is that I found a zippered binder that has two sets of rings. When the binder opens, there are 1.5" rings on each side, and they are off-set so the binder closes properly. My hope it that I can have my clipped coupons on one side, and the insert pages on the other side.

My one mistake was making the change mid-month. I should have waited until the 9/30 coupons expired, and then made the switch to the baseball card holders. I'm worried that while I need all the holders now, maybe I won't need that many once my process changes. But, I can live with that oops. Hopefully this system will be easier and I can stay on top of things.

Way Behind...and Becoming Overwhelmed

Where have the last two weeks gone? I was doing so good, and then two weeks ago hit. What triggered it? I have no idea, but I need to find some time to catch up!!

My coupon box is a mess. I need to pull expired, plus file LOTS of newbies. I am beginning to wonder if I need to go to the baseball card holder system. It's so nice being able to find everything alphabetically in my box, but is all the time it takes worth it? I'm really torn on how to proceed, which doesn't help my procrastination in cleaning up my mess. I looked at zippered three-ring binders today, but I only found ones with 1.5" ring...that just doesn't seem big enough. I wish I knew what to do!

I'm also behind on my record keeping. Since we have such LOUSY coupons in the Quad Cities, I get coupons from so many other sources that I like to keep track of what I actually use. But, again, is it worth my time? I have never thought of "my time" with a price tag associated with it, but maybe it's time for me to start thinking that way. How much of my limited free time is needed to keep my couponing hobby - habit - lifestyle - going?

I did score some freebie's today. Hit the double coupons at Kmart and picked up a few things, including some toiletry items that will go into the "Dad Stash". Hubs and I also did a Walmart run tonight and I grabbed some P&G travel size items with expiring coupons (Tide, Head & Shoulders). I hit a bonus last night at CVS...they had Sunday sale prices already posted, so I grabbed the Glade reed diffuser a day early. Gotta love a $6.99 price tag, minus a $3 coupon, with $6.99 easy cash bucks back. You don't hit $3 money-makers on a single product that often!