Getting it together...

So, just to fill you in on the past couple months- it's been a little crazier than normal and my blog (and many other things) have been a bit behind. Since June I've taken two classes to finish my Master's degree- one online and one a two week class and now I'm done! I haven't taken classes since I've had my kids so it was a little more challenging- but I did great in both classes and am relieved to be done. We also took a great week long vacation a couple weeks ago on a lake up north- the trip was long overdue and we enjoyed every bit of it! After that I had family in town from out of state and spent as much time as I could with them, and now things are finally calming down and I'm starting to get things back on track.

After all that, my coupons are a mess! I've still been doing pretty well with couponing during all this- great at Rite Aid, not as good at Meijer... so tonight I decided I'd start to get my coupons back in order so I can get my grocery shopping spending down.

My project is not done, but I figured I'd show my progress as I start to show you how I organize my coupons. Lately, I haven't been doing much coupon clipping when I get the inserts, I just grab what I need from matchups I find and figured I'd deal with the rest later. Well, it's later now and it was time to do a coupon cleanout and organize.

I use a binder to organize my coupons and I use 2- 3-ring binders to store my newspaper inserts. They were a mess! Here are before pictures.









I had inserts going back to April, and I usually on a pretty regular basis take out any expired coupons and get the binder cleaned out. I went through the really old ones and cut out any coupons not yet expired that I might possibly use. I did this for most of May and June's inserts. I didn't have too many coupons to clip since most had expired... those were in my white binder. Here's how that ended up looking and what was left...



a small pile of coupons to put in my coupon binder, a bag of expired and cut inserts and a bunch of empty inserts!

Then I started working on the newer inserts and got through most of them!




I still have to go through and cut coupons from the past 2 weeks inserts, but I made it through the rest. I put all the to be recycled inserts in a bag (on the left on the picture) to be recycled--that's a lot of extra inserts I've been hanging onto! Tonight I hope to finish getting through my August inserts and then put them in my clipped binder. I'll post pictures of that and show you how that's organized in a later posting. It's nice to see two thin, organized binders again!