Next, perhaps the most important part of the binder is the way you store your coupons. Get to your local supercenter (Target or Wal-Mart) and find baseball trading card holders. These are thing plastic sheets with 9 pockets per sheet. You can store up to 18 different coupon sets per sheet. Just turn the sets back to back and slide into a card slot. Some don’t like folding their coupons to fit into the slots, so they prefer using the photo sheets. I did a quick search and found 2 different types that I myself might be interested in. Both by We R Memory Keepers and found on Amazon.com but I’m sure that you could find what you prefer at Wal-Mart, Target, or even a craft or hobby store. Basically these will allow you to store your larger coupons without having to fold them. If I do decide to go ahead and buy these and use them, I’ll post a photo showing you. I’m sure that not having to fold a stack of coupons would save space as far as thickness of the binder, so this is probably something I’ll definitely look into getting. I’ll let you know! :)
Perhaps the absolute most important part of the binder method is the binder itself! I had a briefcase binder that my husband had bought for me several years ago, but many use the binders that you find in the school supplies at your local store. Just be certain you get one that is large enough because you don’t want to outgrow your first binder if you spend money on it! So don’t shop too small!
This is the inside of mine. As you can see there are pockets allowing many different uses here. I have slots where I keep all my store bonus cards. There are is a slot on the left that is perfect for holding a small calculator (a must have when following a budget!). The slot on the right is probably for a cell phone, but I place my coupons that I don’t use during a shopping trip in it. Many times I’ll have coupons pulled that I intend on using but the item is sold out. So that I don’t lose my coupons I don’t use, I slide them in this slot and put them in their proper place later on. There are also two folder slots, you can see one folder sticking out of the front slot there. I put inserts in these, as well as coupon books that I’ve not yet clipped out of like the P&G books you can get by mail. Oh and a pen or pencil and there are 2 slots here for those. In the back of my binder there is a notebook that I make my lists on every week. And last but not least I always keep envelopes in my binder. I have one for each of the main stores I frequent. I just reuse these every time I shop. This gives me a place to store the coupons for the planned shopping trip without misplacing them and mixing the different stores up. For instance, all the coupons I plan on using at Publix go into my Publix envelope and so forth. If you are super frugal then just use the envelopes from junk mail, they are great for this and they are always plenteous!
Well I guess that just about does it on the binder method. Like I said this isn’t the easiest or quickest of the methods, but it is the one that has worked the best for me. I have everything I need in one place. Categorized and portable. It does take quite a bit of time clipping the coupons and storing them, I usually spend several hours on one day of the week doing this or I split it up. One day I’ll take out all the inserts and separate the pages. The next I might start the clipping process and only do a few pages and store those away. It all depends on how I’m feeling. You might also be thinking about clipping being doing a page at a time. What I would suggest is to separate the pages. Then take 3-5 sheets of the same page, and either using scissors or an exacto blade cut the coupons out all at once. I use a cutting board and a razor knife and this works best for me. Anyway, Good luck with your binder! And since there may be some who do not think the binder method is best for them, I’ll try and find posts around the internet on the other methods being used.
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