Stocking Up Using Coupons: My Method

I've been sick lately and in bed, so I haven't been able to post or go shopping. I missed last weeks shopping deals and I will most likely have to wait to shop until next week for my food storage items. Now I'm a week behind in gathering my food storage- Dang it!!!

I want to share the method I use for clipping coupons. When I first started the grocery game (coupon help website: http://www.thegrocerygame.com/ ), I clipped all my coupons and put them into a folder by category. like canned goods, paper goods, etc. Well, after about one week of that, I wanted to find other ways because it took me over an hour to find my coupons and I only had one weeks worth of coupons to go through!! I couldn't imagine how long it would take me to find find them when I had months worth of coupons. And you have to calculate all that time spent cutting them all out too. NO thanks!! I went online and looked up different ways of organizing coupons and found this method. I love it! The next week, when i went to find my coupons, it took me less than 20 minutes and that's including the time I spent cutting them out. It have saved me tons of time and also saved my hands from hurting from all the cutting. Here's what I do...

STEP 1: Buy the Sunday Paper! Duh...

STEP 2: Remove all coupon inserts. Usually there are 2 inserts, a Smartsource and a Redplum. Some Sundays, you will get only one coupon insert, some times you will get more. The week after Christmas, I got five and was super happy! Last week, I received three coupon inserts. The two mentioned above and also, the P&G Saver

Step 3: Mark the front of each insert with the date.

This paper was received on Sunday, January 18th.

Step 4: Buy a large 3 ring binder and clear page protectors.
I bought one with a plastic slip on the cover so that I could keep miscellaneous items in there.
It works great to hold my Walgreen's receipts so that at the end of the month, I can redeem my cash rebates. (I will be getting $13.00 back this month from Walgreen's)



Step 5: Slide one week's worth of coupons into one page protector (all three inserts this week).
So each time I turn the page, it's for the next weeks coupons and so on.

Step 6: Buy a coupon wallet or a plastic divider envelope.
These are from the $1.00 items at Target.
I shop at two different stores each week. Walgreens and Ralphs but occasionally, I go to Von's as well. So I bought three in three different colors. One for each store. Some day I will make fancy labels for them.

Step 7: Mark your dividers into categories. What I have done, is set it up the way my store flows. Staring with condiments, canned, side dishes (like rice, pasta, etc), beverages, baking, snacks, breakfast, personal (shampoo, toothpaste, etc), household (cleaners, etc), paper goods, frozen and meat/dairy. I shop for meat, dairy and frozen last so I put those at the back of my envelope.

Step 8: Clip your coupons, put them in the proper category so you're not standing in the isles searching for them for twenty minutes and head out to the store.

This entire process takes me 20 minutes and I'm getting faster each week!!

I use the grocery game to help me with coupon shopping. This way, I am not searching ads each week and racking my brain to see if something is really good price or not.

Just a quick tutorial on how the grocery game does the work for me:

The grocery game tells me which items are on sale and when to use a coupon.

It will say something like this:

Daisy Sour Cream

orig price: $2.00

on sale: $1.50

coupon: $1.00 rp 10/19

final price $0.50

So I mark my list of the items I want to buy, print it out, sit down at the table with my coupon folder, flip to that date's insert and clip the daisy sour cream coupon out and file it into the divided envelop in the "Dairy" section. Then I repeat with other items I want to purchase.

See where it says coupon: $1.00 rp 10/19 ? that's telling me that I can find the coupon in the

redplum (rp) section of the Sunday paper that came out on 10/19 and it's for $1.00 off. Since I wait for it to go on sale before using a coupon, I am getting the item at a rock bottom price. This is a really great way to stock up on your food storage (don't forget personal items, like tooth brushes, etc). I love how I can buy things for so cheap or sometimes get them FREE and sock them away. I will rotate my storage and check expiration dates. The good thing now a days is, most packaged/canned items have a pretty long shelf life.

So stock up on them when they are at rock bottom prices!