Best Results Organizing

The issue of expired coupons in last week’s post prompted a flurry of reader email. It’s time to admit why Paper Doll has generally avoided blogging about coupons. It’s certainly not because I fail to appreciate bargains. My reticence has more to do with what I see as the Coupon-Industrial Complex.

GOING TO EXTREMES

Whole web sites are devoted to an increasingly complex series of coupon-related grocery store challenges, and TLC has elevated Extreme Couponing to a national sport. I applaud those who navigate the systems to save money and inexpensively acquire bulk items they then donate to charity. However, in many households, frenzied couponing yields large quantities of unneeded items and those that expire or perish before they can reasonably be used. Extremely organized participants can warehouse mass purchases, but too often, mass couponing results in massive, unmanageable clutter.

In a recent issue of her newsletter, The Dotted Line, Amy Bergin, founder of The Couponizer (of which, more later) examined her plight as a more temperate, moderate couponer and noted with insight,

Sure, devoting more time (that I could be doing other things) and increasing the volume of coupons (that require more time to manage) used will increase my overall savings, but I also factor in the quality of my purchases and the quality of the life I have created for myself and my family as a result of my spending to decide if all this is worth the effort.

Extreme couponing requires diligence, a particular kind of lifestyle and flexible family food preferences. It may very well be worth it financially, but it isn’t easy. And in an age where people feel overwhelmed by so many demands of modern life, disorganization often goes hand-in-hand with self-recriminations over unmaintained systems.

Thus, today’s post isn’t for extreme couponers. If that’s your area of interest, I suggest:

The Grocery Game — Terri Gault provides a system and database for accessing coupons, comparing prices and identifying when to make purchases for maximum benefit. There’s a one-month free trial, after which membership is subscription-based.

The Drugstore Game seems even more complex. As I read the arcane rules and combinations, my grip on comprehension echoes long-forgotten calculus lessons. For a primer, I direct you to blog posts from Money Saving Mom, Chief Family Officer, and Family Friendly Frugality.

Be CentsAble, created by Chrissy Pate, is a testament to the variety of ways one can use coupons, coupon databases and shopping systems to save money. Chrissy and co-author Kristin McKee wrote Be CentsAble: How to Cut Your Household Budget In Half, which is chock-full of superior non-nonsense consumer advice.

For the rest of you who hope to save some money on your everyday purchases without becoming Edward or Edwina Scissorhands, let’s explore basic couponing tips.

CLIP CLIPPING BEFORE IT GETS OUT OF HAND

As you approach clipping coupons, be realistic, and be honest with yourself.

Only clip coupons for products you:

• Already actually use, or
• Are willing to try and
• Are likely to try

Many coupon and shopping bloggers advise: “Don’t be brand-specific” or “Don’t just clip the coupons you think you might use.” That may work for the extreme shoppers, the ones willing to collect and hold onto ten weeks’ of newspaper inserts, check databases to identify the timing of specials, and create shopping lists based on an algorithm of sales, coupons and warehousing/shopping cycles.

Paper Doll has no doubt that these kinds of systems work for people who have the time and the inclination to invest in these efforts. However, as most consumers find, this isn’t a process to which the typical consumer can commit.

First of all, many of us have brand-specific tastes. The only orange juice I find palatable is Minute Maid Pulp-Free from concentrate. Choosy mothers choose Jif, but Paper Doll picks Peter Pan. Many you probably find that your family members have the same picky, child-like palate as I have, and you’ve come to be realistic about how much food flexibility your family will embrace.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t experiment with groceries or household items. After all, you might find that a generic detergent cleans just as well as a name-brand and is less expensive than the brand product, even with a coupon and an advertised sale. But again, be realistic.

If your culinary repertoire includes only seven recipes, all pasta-based, it’s unlikely that you’ll take advantage of coupons for exotic foodstuffs you’ve never eaten, let alone prepared. If a coupon entices you to try something new, that’s fabulous. But don’t clip coupons with the expectation that you’ll make wholesale life changes based on retail behavior.

What about buying in bulk? The grocery bloggers are, in the abstract, correct. Stock up on items purchased on sale and via coupons, but know your limits. If you live in an apartment, you probably can’t store 96 rolls of toilet paper. There’s a square inch limit to how much of even the most delicious deeply-discounted ice cream you can accommodate in a fridge-top freezer.

STORING COUPONS & COUPONING AT THE STORE

One of the rubrics of organizing is that if a system is too complicated, or a storage area too hard to access, you’ll find excuses not to use it. Keep It Simple, Silly!

Centralize coupons within one accessible, portable solution.

Casual Couponers

If you’re generally going to use fewer than a dozen coupons over the course of a few weeks, neatly arrange them with the soonest-to-expire on top, paper clip them together, and tuck them in your wallet, directly behind the currency. Don’t worry about sorting. It will take only a matter of seconds, while at the store, to flip through your coupons so that you can make sure you buy something for which you have a coupon.

Cent-sational Couponers

If your coupon use is light-to-moderate, you don’t need luxury level coupon storage. A simple checkbook-sized accordion folder like the five-pocket Smead Tag Along will suffice.

The purse-size Deluxe Coupon Organizer Wallet, available in a variety of patterns, works well for those who prefer a little style along with their substance.

When open, it straps directly to the grocery cart for easy access while shopping.

Consider simple categories like groceries, toiletries, cleaning supplies, pet/specialty items, etc. and sort coupons into general chronological order by expiration date. Don’t get too caught up — “this week”, “soon”, and “not for a while” will suffice, or you can charge your kids with the job of organizing by strict expiration chronology, if you need to keep them busy and quiet.

Before you head for the store, flip through each category to see what you might want to add to your grocery list based on soon-to-expire coupons.

Carload Couponers

If you’ve got a family or are otherwise shopping for multiple people, you’ll obviously have need for a more expansive (and expandable) system for keeping your coupons organized into myriad essential categories. The more coupons you corral, the harder it can be to maintain them neatly and still be safely mobile.

The standard-bearer in this arena is a professional organizer favorite, Amy Bergin’s The Couponizer, a system for gathering coupons, sorting them, and housing them safely within the Couponizer book.

A full Couponizer system includes a variety of tools, including 18 category pockets for various food and merchandise types, loyalty sleeves (for safeguarding store loyalty cards, “punch” cards and gift cards), the CoupStacker expandable coupon sorting mat, the CoupTracker for tracking progressive savings, a shopping list, scissors and a carrying case.

DIGITIZING COUPONS

Newspaper inserts and magazine coupons are fine if you already take the paper or subscribe to coupon-filled magazines, but consider how technology can advance your couponing strategies without increasing paper clutter.

First, there are a variety of sites from which you can select and print manufacturers’ coupons. Check the sites and Facebook pages of your favorite products, and review the following sites from which you can print just the coupons you want:

Be CentsAble
Cool Savings
Coupons.com
Mambo Sprouts (for organic groceries)
RedPlum
Smart Source

Paper Doll is also a huge fan of Lori Felix’s blog More With Less Today, which links to a wide variety of printable coupons, discounts, retail and travel deals, and freebies.

In addition, there are options for bypassing paper coupons altogether.

SavingStar is a free web site that provides no-clip coupons. Search by zip code to locate grocery stores and drugstores convenient to you and then register your loyalty card numbers with SavingStar. At your leisure, log into the site, select the coupons you wish to redeem, and they are digitally loaded onto your card. When you make a purchase using your loyalty card, instead of the coupon being redeemed in cash as cents-off, the amount accumulates in your SavingStar account until you decide to cash out via check, deposit the money in your Paypal account or donate your savings to charity.

Cellfire is a free service that helps you locate, select and store digital grocery coupons on your store loyalty card and non-grocery discounts on your smart phone. Discounts stored on your loyalty card are automatically deducted when you use your card while shopping; to get the discounts from your phone, just show the mobile coupon to the cashier. Cellfire also offers printable coupons, which you can have sent to your computer to store for later printing.

ShortCuts provides free access to digital coupons. Sign up for an account, register your loyalty cards, and at your convenience, click on the coupons you want loaded onto your card. Coupon discounts will be automatically deducted when you swipe your card at the store. As with Cellfire, you can also select and send printable coupons to your computer.

Whether you’re old school or high tech, single-serving or family pack, there’s a way to keep your coupons organized and under control…without going to extremes.