Coupons: Categories, Brand Loyalty and Sources

It's fun collecting the coupons from all the various sources: the Sunday inserts, the internet, specially marked packages, trading and from www.couponqueen.com.

So now it's time to use them. Did you forget where you put them, have ½ of them expired, are the other half in an out of the way drawer? So what's the best way to make sure that the coupon savings actually make their way into your hands.

Organization. Don't turn away, it's easy. Have you organized your dinner, have your helped your child get his school supplies, that's all part of organization.

Now let's just take it a little further: coupon organization. It starts off with collecting as many coupons as possible and then to devise a system to keep them orderly. I actually used the supermarket as my guide. When I walked the aisles I notice the division of products: dairy, meat, frozen, cereal etc.

Knowing I couldn't improve on this idea, I copied it. I put my coupons into categories just like the supermarket aisles. I then put them in alpha order, but you can also put them in supermarket order, your choice. Here are some of my categories in alpha order:

• Baking
• Beverages
• Bread/Crackers/Cookies
• Cereal/Breakfast items
• Coffee/Tea
• Condiments
• Dog Food/Products
• Drug Items
• Frozen Food
• Household

I have another 10 categories, but you get the idea. Behind each category are my coupons, again in alpha order. So in back of coffee/tea, I might have at any given time, Celestial Tea, Chock full a Nuts, Eight O'Clock, Folgers, Lipton Tea, Maxwell House, and Starbucks. I keep all these choices so I'll always have a coupon for the sale item.

You may wonder if I'm brand loyal. I am to those products I enjoy. But I am flexible so that I can get the best bang for the buck' so to speak. Flexibility is fun too, you get a chance to try all different products you may have overlooked in the past.

If I find Maxwell House coffee on sale for 2/$4, and save another $1 with my $1/2 coupon, that's my favorite coffee for the moment. But I'd be just as happy with the same sale on Chock full a Nuts.

It's good for kids too. There were a few products over the years that I could never switch, like Skippy Chunky peanut butter for Michael or Honey Nut Cheerios for Mark, but in general my kids knew they got what was on sale and couponed. And when they followed me into a store I could always get out of buying items by saying I don't have a coupon or it's not on sale.' And guess what, that ended the discussion.

So take the leap, get those coupons in order. I use an expandable check book file that's about 8 x 4, with tagged cardboard dividers that my mother typed for me and close it all with an elastic band. To make it more manageable you can limit your categories to 5 or 10, and add more as you reach your comfort level. Let me know how you do.

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