This coupon crap is going to drive me crazy!

OK, I have got to get this coupon thing figured out or I am going to go out of my mind.

I was very happy with my couponing the last couple weeks. I only use coupons for items I will use. I don't want to build a stockpile and I don't get things just because they are cheap or free.

Then I saw this post and I don't know what came over me. I knew I didn't want the body wash but the razor and shaving cream appealed to me. I went to Walgreens today with the intention of buying $30 of Gillette products and receiving $10 in register rewards. I had coupons so I thought that would lower my out of pocket cost and I had $6 in register rewards. I should have received $10 in register rewards for the Gillette products and an additional $5 for the razor (naturally, they were out of the razor in the picture but I thought the one I got was ok.)

I checked out and started to leave. I barely got out the door and realized I didn't get my register rewards. When I went back to the register the cashier said none printed out and called the manager for me. He said the $30 was after coupons. At the same time, I realized I had the wrong razor. He figured out a way to give me the $10 but said he couldn't do anything about the razor reward. I thought I could return everything but I would lose my coupons and register rewards. I needed to pick up my kids from summer school so I didn't really have time to deal with it. I was appreciative that the manager gave me the $10 so didn't feel like I could ask him for more. (I think I might try to exchange the razor for the correct one. I will probably have to go to a different Walgreens since once my Walgreens is out of something it doesn't usually get it back in stock before the end of the week.)

I still got a good deal on the products but none were products I would normally buy. I can substitute some of them for my regular shaving gel and my husband's deodorant so it's not a total waste.

Here is my plan:
I am going to start getting the paper again so I can have the ad in hand and be able to figure exactly what I am doing before I go to the store. (Seeing it online is just not the same for me. I need the paper in my hand.)

I am going to print out or write out the complete deal as it is stated on the blogs giving information about the deals (savingmoneyinmissouri.com and krazycouponlady.com.)

I am going to stick with the plan to only use coupons on items I would normally buy!!

Coupon Binder

A couple months ago I participated in the challenge at A Bowl Full of Lemons about creating a coupon binder. You can see that post here. At the time I was not able to complete it. I have been working on it for the past couple weeks and am finally finished. I probably shouldn't say finished because I know it is a work in progress. I'm sure there are some things I will need to adjust but for now this is it.


At the end of the challenge I knew I wanted to change my divider categories. I only had five or six. I never did like the categories. I realized I only used those because they were the ones I used in my old coupon organizer. It was one of those about the size & shape of an envelope. When I used that it only had five or six sections so I had to come up with categories that would include everything I would have a coupon for.

I bought these dividers during back to school last year. They were supposed to be erasable. When I wrote on them you couldn't hardly see what I wrote. Plus, I never needed to erase. They had to go.I found these cute pink ones. My favorite color is pink. I saw these a while back but didn't need dividers at the time. When I realized I needed dividers I went ahead and got the pink.

I used my label maker to print out labels and put them on the dividers.Unfortunately, when I put the dividers in the binder you couldn't see the labels past the page protectors and baseball card sheets.I liked the pink dividers so much I considered keeping them anyway, especially since I spent all that time making and placing the labels.

Then I realized how silly that was and headed to Office Depot.

Despite the fact that the Office Depot employee told me he didn't believe they carried any dividers that were specifically made to be extra-wide, I found these. This time before I put the labels on I put the dividers in the binder to see how they would work.Awesome, they will work.

I took the labels off the pink dividers and was able to place them on the new dividers.I love it.

And, they are longer than the plastic pages. Woo hoo.I added something that I hope will help me keep my coupons within categories even more organized. For categories that include several sub-categories I want to keep like coupons with like coupons. For example, within Toiletries I want to keep the toothbrushes and toothpastes together and  make up coupons together, etc. I made a label to stick on the actual plastic page. At first, I thought that might be a little much. For that reason I have not done this through the entire binder. I'll try it with these first and if I like it I will add more.

When deciding which categories to use I first checked Krazy Coupon Lady's suggestions. They didn't quite work for me. I looked at what my categories used to be and what coupons I collect most and created categories based on those things.

My categories are:
baking
bread
snacks
breakfast
lunch/dinner
sides
fridge
frozen
cans & jars
cleaning
paper products
meds
toiletries
Target
misc.

I know I have some that may overlap. We'll see how it works.

One thing Krazy Coupon Lady did that I want to eventually add is a table of contents that lists the categories (see here.) Actually, I might do mine a little differently. Her table of contents simply states the categories and then she has a page for the front of each section that explains what is in that section. I might combine the two in the table of contents. We'll see. I don't see that happening any time soon because I want to get started on my next project...

A price book. I have a price book but it needs to be updated and changed around. I want to have my price book because I need to know when a deal is really a good deal. For example, if I hear about a deal at Walgreens I need to know what that product would cost at Target, CVS, Walmart, and my local grocery stores. Plus, I could track sales cycles. (Who am I trying to kid, I don't see that part happening, but it could.)

I am linking up to Works for Me Wednesday, Org. Junkie's 52 Weeks,  A Bowl Full of Lemon's One Project at a Time, Organize with Sandy's Organizing Mission Monday, and Frugal Friday at Marsha's spot.

Reasons I will continue to coupon

Below are pictures of some of the items I have purchased recently using coupons. I check a couple websites/blogs for ways to combine sales and coupons for the greatest savings. My favorite is www.savingmoneyinmissouri.com also known as Clippin' with Carrie. She lives in my area so I know the deals she finds are available close to my home. I also occasionally check krazycouponlady.com.











I paid between $.25 and $.50 for each of the above items. I know there are some people who are able to get these items for free but I am happy with what I was able to do. As of right now, I don't even buy a newspaper. My mom saves her coupon inserts for me and I print a few things off the internet. Considering how little I invest in couponing, I will take paying a quarter for a tube of toothpaste.

Everything in the picture below cost me $1.06. I used a coupon for the Systane, which was also on sale. I had extra care bucks (from CVS) to pay for most of it.

It's deals like this that will keep me going. As frustrated as I might sometimes get, I love a good (or great) deal.

More reasons I hate couponing

I recently got back to couponing. I have had some success but have also been reminded of some of the reasons I got so frustrated that I quit couponing. Here are a couple of those reasons.

First, I would see advertised specials at Walgreens that combined with a coupon would be a great deal, maybe even free. Several times in a row I went into Walgreens for those items and they would be gone. I would try several Walgreens or visit the same Walgreens a couple times that week and still had no luck. That's annoying.

Second, are things like this...I know I gave the cashier six coupons. I watched her scan each one. Sometimes at Target a coupon is scanned and the cashier has to press a button before it works. It also seems like sometimes the screen shows $0.00 but the discount shows on the receipt. (Maybe that is what happened and it shouldn't have, I don't know.)

I checked the receipt when I got to the van and saw that only five coupons were applied. I chose to buy some of the items only because of the combined sale, Target coupon, & manufacturer coupon savings. Some of the coupon savings are listed by the item, some are listed at the bottom. This means you can't tell which items some of the coupons applied to.

I could have gone back in to the customer service desk (and I thought about it.) I figured what they would do is go to the register I was at and either close it down or make people wait. They would have checked the coupons and saw that there was one I did not get credit for. We would then have had to go back to the customer service desk where they would have given me the value of the coupon. It was either $.75 or $1.00. That would have taken a long time. My time is more valuable than that. Let's say it would have taken ten minutes (and I think that is a minimum, I really think it would have taken much longer.) I'm going to spend ten minutes trying to get $.75 or $1.00? No, I don't think so. I decided not to go back in. The entire thing made me frustrated, though.

This leads to my last reason for thing couponing....

I'm not very good at it.

I have read a lot on blogs and in magazines and books about couponing but there are just some things I have had to learn on my own.

In general, I do not enjoy doing things I am not good at. Actually, I tend to avoid them. I am determined to get better at this, though. So, I'm working on it. (I'm planning on writing a post about my improved coupon binder this week.)

I remember why I stopped couponing

This week I got my coupon binder back in order in response to A Bowl Full of Lemons weekly challenge. (See here.) In addition to the challenge I was also inspired to resume couponing again by Extreme Couponing on TLC.

I have no interest in being an extreme couponer. There is no way I could spend that kind of time. I also have no interest in having that kind of stockpile. What intrigued me was that so many of them have products like toilet paper and toothpaste that they get free or almost free. That I would like to have.

Once my coupons were in order I looked at Clippin' with Carrie to check what was available at CVS, Walgreens, and Target. I wrote my lists and gathered my coupons. I planned to head to those stores this week.

On my first trip (on Monday) I headed to CVS and Walgreens. CVS was a success. (I only wanted one item.) Walgreens, on the other hand, only had one of the five items I wanted. That is frustrating. That is one of the reasons I stopped couponing. I'd check the couponing sites and get all my stuff together and then most of the products would be sold out. (The other reason is it takes so much flippin' time.)

At Target I had better results. I saved around $14 on $100 trip. For me, that's great. It is a score like this:(This is the toothpaste I got for $.50.)

that will keep me couponing (at least for now.)

My coupon binder

The challenge this week at A Bowl Full of Lemons is to create a coupon binder. I'm going to share what I created.

I've used coupons for a long time. I just can't stand to think I paid more for something than I had to. I think I am pretty smart about how I use coupons. I only use coupons for things I would otherwise buy or for something that I want to try. (If you use a coupon for something you wouldn't buy without the coupon it's not really saving money.) Over the years there have been times I used a lot of coupons and times when I didn't use them at all.

For most of that time I used one of those coupon organizers that looks like a big envelope with several sections. That was not an effective way to use coupons. It was always frustrating. If I wanted to use a coupon I would have to dig through the entire section to find the one I wanted. Often I would find expired coupons because I forgot they were in there. To combat that, before I went shopping I would look through the entire organizer to find coupons that were about to expire. So, each week I would have to take out all the coupons and look through each one.

Last year I heard about a blog called Clippin' with Carrie. Carrie matches up coupons with the current ads. (I know there are lots of other blogs that do the same thing.) At around the same time I saw many examples of coupon binders. I knew I needed to change the way I organized my coupons. I created my binder based on the ones I saw at that time.

In my binder I use:
baseball card protectors that have nine sections (I found them at Wal-mart.) Most coupons fit nicely into them. (It's hard to see in this picture but they are on the right, behind the divider. I couldn't get a good picture without a lot of reflection.) For coupons that are just a little too big I got sheets with four 4x6 sections (I got them at Office Depot.)
For coupons that are way to big to fit in either of those I use 81/2x11 page protectors.

Here is my binder:
As always, more practical than pretty.
Inside I have a couple pencil pouches but up to now they really haven't been necessary. I have a Target reusable bag but usually if I remember to take the binder I remember to take in my reusable bags.

While my binder is NOT cute, it has a feature I don't think I would trade to get a cute binder.
It zips. I like that feature because it keeps everything contained. If I drop my binder, nothing falls out of it. I can't imagine being in the store, dropping my binder and having coupons fly all over the place. Lucky for me, I already had this binder. I got it many years ago on clearance. (That was one time buying something on clearance that I didn't need worked out for me.)

When I go to the store I carry the coupons I am going to use and my list on this clipboard:It's just the right size.

I carry the clipboard and binder in this:It's a bag I got from Thirty-one that just didn't work for what I originally wanted it for. The binder fits perfectly in it and I don't feel like a big dork carrying my binder into the store.

Although I quit getting the local paper, my mom saves her coupons for me. I have not figured out a way to work coupon clipping into my routine. That means it could be weeks (or months) before I clip the coupons. This time, this is what I have:
Yikes. They date back to January. (Did you know the inserts have the date printed on the edge? Knowing that will make it much easier to organize this mess.)

I was about to just chuck them into the recycle bin, inspired by one of my favorite bloggers (Nony at A Slob Comes Clean) who threw away 21 pounds of coupons (see her post here.) She blogged about how she just didn't have time for that right now. I felt the same way. Obviously, if it was important to me I would work it into my schedule. On the other hand, if I didn't care I would have already gotten rid of them. So, when I saw the current challenge at A Bowl Full of Lemons I thought I would give it one more try.

There is one thing I do that I haven't seen mentioned elsewhere. It's this:
After I clip my coupons I keep the inserts. I put them in a hanging file folder and use mini-Post its to label the date on them. When I look at Clippin' with Carrie (and sites similar to hers) they often match up coupons that are in older inserts. By keeping my inserts organized in this way, I can refer back to those inserts easily if there is a coupon I need later. This has been so good for me keeping my sanity. If I hear about a great deal on something that I use but I no longer have the coupon for, it drives me crazy. I would rather not have heard about the deal. Plus, I would almost rather not do coupons than have something like that happen over and over.

Hopefully, I will be able to keep up with all of this--this time.