Couponing!

Hi! So here goes my first "real" blog post. I'll be sharing how I go about finding my coupons and organizing them.

I'm new to couponing, but this is the routine I've developed so far.

First, I buy one copy of each of the two major Sunday newspapers in my area. Then, I sit down and pull out all the ads I'm interested in. Then? You guessed it. I flip through them and pull out all the pages with coupons I'd like to keep. The ads I don't want go into a pile and the ones I do want go into a separate pile. By the time that's done, this is usually what I end up with:

To the left are the weekly ads I keep and to the right are the ones I don't want.

Next, I (with the help of my boyfriend) cut out all the coupons and end up with a pile like this:

They are then organized into categories so it's easier for me to file them away into my coupon binder. For example, a coupon for Scrubbing Bubbles would go into the Cleaning category, since I have a divider dedicated to that in my binder. Last, the coupons are filed away into my coupon binder. This weekly process takes about an hour and a half-ish but that's with me getting distracted, taking breaks, watching TV, etc.

But before I'm completely done, I or my boyfriend (sometimes both) will go through the ads/coupons I don't want to make sure there's nothing I didn't want. This particular time, I missed quite a few useful coupons. Here's what was left of my recycle pile after I had double checked it:

(Please excuse Black Bear a.k.a Bear, the kitty. He loves to lay where he's not supposed to. Typical cat. :-P )

Despite Bear, hopefully you can clearly see the many less ads/coupons in my recycle pile after going through it a second time. Before:

After:

I also check Coupons.com and Target.com for new coupons every couple of weeks. If I find any I like, I print them up, cut them out and file them into my coupon binder. If you're concerned about using too much ink by printing coupons, I recommend printing in black and white and printing in "fast" mode, which should be a setting on most printers. If you'd really like to save on ink, think about investing in a laser printer. I haven't done it and don't have any plans to but it does save a lot in the long run on ink! 

And with that, there's my first "real" blog post. I hope it gave you some good ideas, or maybe inspired you to give coupons a try. If you have any tips/tricks/methods about anything coupons, I'd love to hear! :-)