Coupon crazy

I believe one key to saving money is organizing your finances. One way I try to do this is keeping my coupons organized. I never thought I'd be "that" woman in the store with loads of coupons but my, how much things change when you have a baby!! Lately though everytime I go into a store, someone stops me and asks about my coupon book. I've even had 2 men ask me to teach their wives how I "coupon". So I figured this would make a great post, in case any of you out there are also looking for a way to save money and be organized!

I decided to go with the coupon binder method. It's a little bit of time/work up front but to me it's so much easier than trying to sift through the coupons in a plain ol' accordian file. So here's a picture of my binder:

I found this pink one (of course) at KMART and I'm actually already starting to outgrow it! I can hardly believe it. It's a 2inch binder I think? I'd recommend starting with a 3 inch so you don't run into the space problem I'm having. Believe me, it's easier to do than you think!

Here's how I have all the coupon's organized. I used clear baseball card pages that are available anywhere (K-Mart, Walmart, etc) and 3 packs of tabbed dividers from Office Depot. These were great because they had printable inserts. Saved me a lot of time instead of having to hand write each tab!
These are the categories I used:

Baby
Bags
Baking (I also use this category for refrig. cookies, brownie/cake mixes, cooking oils, etc)
Batteries
Beverages (Coffee, Crystal light, sodas)
Bread
Candy
Canned
Cereal
Cleaner
-Airfreshners, Candles **I had to make a second category because once I started with coupons I began noticing that just about every company out there wants your house to smell good and it was taking up too much of the actual "Cleaner category" so I made one all its own!**
Condiments
Dairy
Frozen
Health food
Hygiene
Jelly/Peanut Butter
Laundry
Meat
Medication
Paper products
Pasta
Pet
Rice (I use this category for boxed items too, like betty crocker potatoes, hamburger helper, etc) If you can think of a better tab for them let me know! :)
Salad dressing
Shampoo/Shaving
Snacks
Seasonings/Spices
Toothpaste

The last tab I keep is for restaraunt coupons. There always seems to be one or two in every weeks paper so I just stick them back there so I always have them handy if I'm out and want to grab something quick for lunch or dinner.

As you can see, it's super easy to just flip through the pages and find the coupon you're looking for. It also makes it easy to see when they expire so you can just pull those out when they do if you don't get to use them before hand.

I keep a pair of scissors, a small calculator for working up deals on the spot, a pen, and usually I have that weeks CVS ad too! (I'm am addict)

This method has saved me SO much money! Just yesterday I was in Walgreens getting my free cereal and toothpaste and I saw they were clearancing the Oust candles from $7.99 to $3.47. I thought I had a coupon for them and sure enough, I tabbed over to "airfreshner/candle" and there they were. 3 $2.00 off each Oust candle! I got 3 of them for much less than the price of 1 at full price! See, it pays to be organized!
If you have any questions or tips on how you coupon, please leave me a comment! I'd love to hear your ideas!