On to bigger and better things....

As most of you know I upgraded to using The Couponizer, to hold my coupons, a while back.

 I LOOVED my Couponizer but as you can see I outgrew it.

 It was like this all the time and just getting worse. It was overloaded and starting to become harder to use.



 I thought about it for a while and decided that I didn't want to scale down my money saving habits. I was actually trying to make them grow, so I moved up to the world of the coupon binder. Here it is....



I scouted a couple thrift stores to make it (as well as some inserts from Office Depot) and I was very pleased with my results. Just a quick run through of what's in it....The front inside pocket holds coorperate coupon policies for Target and Walgreens (something that's VERY important to have on you when shopping in those stores)...and just a couple other odds and ends of things. The first few pages are just full sized sheet protectors that hold a list of the online coupons I have loaded onto my King Sooper's card. I also have 2 pouches that I will be inserting later today. I just got them yesterday at Goodwill (they look brand new!). One I will use for supplies...scissors, paperclips, maybe a little calculator, pen, etc. The other one will be my "while I'm in the store" holder. I need a place to put the coupons I know I'm using during my shopping trip and then a seperate place to put coupons that I may decide not to use (the ones I grabbed out that are expiring but there isn't a great deal so I pass on them).


I ended up with a few different types of inserts. I know some couponers use baseball card inserts. I do have a few of those because I, luckily, had some here at my house that I wasn't using. Otherwise I found some photo inserts (at ARC thrift store) that work GREAT! I actually like them better because I don't have to fold so many coupons to make them fit (but I do like having a few of the baseball card inserts for some of the smaller coupons). Some are actually for negatives so I can fit some of the rectangular coupons in those (they are perfect for catalinas) and the others fit 3x5 (I think) photos. I still have to fold a few of the bigger coupons but otherwise they are PERFECT. I didn't find the quantity of inserts I needed at ARC, so I went to Office Depot and used some of my worklife rewards to pick up more of the 3x5 photo size inserts.

I definatly do not recommend buying the inexpensive paper tab dividers. I'm sure that it won't take long for them to end up getting torn so it wouldn't be the best use of your money. I bought tabs that you can just adhere to something else (I used sheet protectors since I had some here at home) and it's perfect! You can also buy sheet protectors with divider tabs on them but this was more cost effective for me because the adhesive tabs were only $4 and change for a pack of 25. It's also better than a regular plain divider because I can stick other store coupons in those sheet protectors, to go with my catagories. What I mean by that is that, since I mainly shop at King Soopers, I put Target, Safeway, Albertsons, etc coupons in that seperate area so I don't confuse myself and try to use one while I'm in King Soopers. I also inserted a piece of card stock to make the "dividers" more sturdy.

 The tabs are currently organized alphabetically because that's how The Couponizer is set up, so that's what I was used to. I MAY change and put them in order based on the store I usually shop in but we'll see.

I also have tabs in the back for restaurant/fast food coupons and one for other store coupons (Bed, Bath and Beyond, JoAnns, etc).

It took me quite a while to get all my coupons transferred over so I felt like I might be a little over my head with the whole deal, but now that I have it all put together I really like it. It's, obviously, not as compact at my Couponizer was but I think, in the long run, I'm going to be really happy with it. I'll let you know. ;)