A Virtuous Woman Plans

• Who can find a virtuous woman?  her price is far above rubies
• She looketh well to the ways of her household and eateth not the bread of idleness

Hello again, you virtuous women! I finally get internet back at my house, start doing some blogging, planning some future posts, etc, and then---I disappear for a month!  Let me just say--life got in the way! You may remember me mentioning us having to get our heating and cooling system replace, including moving a closet wall 6 inches.  That turned into a bigger job than we had planned, we ended up having to replace ductwork in the attic, ceiling boxes, and register covers. I had workmen (and woman) in my house for three days, smack in the middle of the house,in and out of rooms, up and down ladders, it was controlled chaos, all of this right as I was trying to gear up for the holidays.  Then came the actual holidays, ready or not.  Next a little family mini-vacation to the city; then came some sickness, and now, I'm finally ready to get back to my planned post--on what subject, you might ask?

Planning, of course!

Last month I wrote about how I was trying to get myself into a new routine, one that accommodated the changes in our lives and our schedules, it just seemed that nothing quite worked. I just could not seem to get myself back on track.

So I started thinking about the times when I was on track,when I was productive and life seemed to flow better. One of the things that I realized about myself, is that if I don't have a plan, I will drift through days or even weeks at a time without accomplishing much of anything at all.

And whether it's a grocery list jotted on the back of a used envelope, or a carefully orchestrated weekly calendar, for me, that means written down.

On paper.

In ink.

You'd think that at this stage in my life I could just wing it and still get it right, still get things done.

U-huh.

Tried that.  Obviously wasn't working.

I've also tried using virtual/electronic calendars, but for me, they don't work well.  For one thing, I never seem to keep everything synced up--phone calendar, kindle calendar, laptop, I have too many options. And for another thing, most of my technology is not the latest and greatest.  I don't have a smart phone and my laptop is eight years old, which makes it a dinosaur.  I used to have a Palm Pilot, which I loved, but even that technology is outdated now.  None of my devices work with any of my other devices.

So I thought about what works for me and what doesn't work for me. and this is what works.

(All of the photos are clickable, which means if you click on them, you can see them larger if you need to)

Three items--a planner-sized calendar, a notebook, and a purse calendar.

For my to-do lists, etc, I like to use a spiral bound 5x7 notebook with lined pages.  These are usually sold as journals. I've been known to buy these 10 at a time when I find them at a good price, which for me is around $2.99 each. Around here that means getting them at a chain discount store that's basically sort of an outlet store, or a chain bookstores when they run them on sale.  I don't buy usually buy them unless there's a deep discount or I have a store coupon, but occasionally I'll find one that I just fall in love with the picture on the cover or the page design, and I'll pay full price.  Just not often!

.I use them as a list-planners and journals, as you'll see in another post later this week. I try to jot a daily "to-do" list on one side, usually the left hand side, as you can see above, then mark things off as I do them, sometime with a check mark, or a line through it, usually both.  And if I do something spontaneous that isn't on my list, I write it down and mark it off as done, as well.  

Yes, I do. 

 Anything left unmarked usually gets transferred to the next day. On the right hand side, I usually jot notes for  outside the house things--errands to do, appointments to make, a grocery list, things to buy from the the Dollar Store, etc.  

I know it sounds weird, but I do my daily lists from front to back, but sometimes I flip to the back and write myself notes about things I need to remember for the long term--that way it doesn't get mixed up with my short term lists.  When my short term lists and long term lists/notes meet, it's time for a new notebook!

My next item is a purse calendar, the size of checkbook.  I'm picky about these, too, even though I write small, I want one with decent sized squares, and I want one with a cover that I like! Right now I'm floundering along with out one of these, my last couple of these were two-year calendars, and I didn't realize I was going to need a new one back in the fall when everyone had calendars everywhere!

Any time I'm out-and-about, if something comes up about a future date, I can add it immediately, or check for conflicts, appointments, etc.  I love my little purse calendars.

And my third item is a larger planner.calendar. This one is about 9 1/2 x 7 1/2 inches, a good size, but not too heavy or bulky.  

First of all is function, of course, but I also want one that's pretty.  I bought this one last fall at Barnes and Noble, I don't remember the price off hand, but it was very reasonable. It's about 9 1/2 x 7 1/2 inches, a good size, but not too heavy or bulky.  I like the little elastic thingy that holds it closed, too, it's easy to slip on and off, but keeps it neat, as well. 

The calendar part is a two page spread, this gives me plenty of room to write.  In the back it has some address book pages and some tear off pages for notes and lists.  No daily/hour by hour pages in this one, that's not something I really need at this season of my life.

And there you have it---the three tools that help me stay on track--if I use them!

My goal for the coming weeks is get back into my planing groove

• writing things down
• checking them off
• using my calendars
• keeping my calendar and planner syncronized

What do you do to keep yourself organized?

Until next time...

This post is linked to:

Make Your Home Sing Monday at Moms the Word

Treasure Box Tuesday at Memories by the Mile

My "Ugly Room Challenge" Update

• Who can find a virtuous woman? her price is far above rubies
• She looketh well to the ways of her household
• She worketh willingly with her hands

Did you see my post last week with the "before" pictures of my "Ugly Room" self-challenge?

No? Well, you need to go look at them.  I'll wait.

Rough, right?

Now let me show you what this room looks like today.  (Pardon the lighting, it was an early morning pre-dawn hour when I took these, and my flash and the lighting in the room aren't the best way to view this room.)

This is the first glimpse you get when you head down the hall.  Better, yes?

Here is the desk area.

Bookcases and cleaned and straightened.  I purged at least 100 books, believe it or not, but replaced them with books from boxes and piles.  This is probably about half of the books we own. There are still others stashed in boxes, our son has at least two bookcases worth of his personal books in his room, and I have probably another book case worth, at least, in my office at church.

The lovely couch is now ready for a nap or a sit, as is the "reading nook" chair.  

And just to show you the reality, we had company coming over, so, while I did do a lot of cleaning, organizing, and purging, I also did some "stash-and-dash" cleaning--put things in a box or bag, and stash it someplace out-of-sight until later!

Another, smaller "stash-and-dash" pile.  

I still to do some work around the desk, too.

And whatever do you do with old journals and sentimental things?  I read somewhere that Beth Moore has instructed her daughters that if anything ever happens to her, they are to take her journals and burn them immediately!  That's how I feel, I would really hate for anyone else to ever read these, and yet I'm not quite ready to torch them myself yet!

I noticed over on Mom's the Word that her post is about having a cut-off-time for chores--this is especially true when you tackle something huge like my "ugly room".  There is no way this could all have been done in a day--even a week, to be honest, unless every thing else is neglected.  But laundry and cooking and dishes still needed doing.  I had a funeral to attend, and church and grocery shopping and company coming over--I needed to attend to the rest of the house, too.  And besides that, you can only work on clutter and cleaning and organizing for so long before you start to make poor decisions about what to keep and where to put it--as soon as I started getting to the point of just mindlessly wanting to through it all away, or alternatively, box it all up and avoid dealing with it, I knew I needed to take a break.

My "ugly room" is still far from finished.  I need to do another sweep through the bookcases and purge a little more.  I need to go through the "stash-and-dash" boxes one at a time. (Oh, and did I mention that I stashed a few boxes in the closet, too?) But at this stage, it's at least clean--you can't imagine the dust I've inhaled in the last week or two! And it's do-able, and approachable.

My "ugly room" is no more.  Now it's just a room---not good or bad, it just is what it is, and I'm up for the challenge to make it into a peaceful retreat for this family of book nerds. I want to change the curtains, add something to a couple of the walls, maybe a throw rug to cover the worn-out wood floors, who knows?  It's still far from pretty, but it's definitely a change in the right direction!

Until next time...

This post is linked to:
Make Your Home Sing at Mom's the Word
Make it Pretty Monday at the Dedicated House
The HomeMaking Party at Hope in Every Season

Mountain or Molehill?

• She looketh well to the ways of her household... 

(The mountain pictured above is a "real" mountain, Mt Shasta, in northern Cailifornia)

Have you ever had one of those tasks on your "to-do" list that you dread doing so much that you just keep putting it off over and over?  You transfer it from one "to-do" list to another because you know you need to do it, but you just really don't want to do it--I mean, you want it done, but you don't want to have to actually do it to get it done?

Cleaning out my freezer has been one of those for me.  My parents raise their own beef, and they generously share with us when they have a butchering done, so we usually get a fairly large quantity of it all at one time.  Last time they had meat done, my son and I went with them to the processing plant to pick it all up, then helped them sort and store in freezers at their house.  When we brought ours home, instead of unpacking the bags, we just shoved them into the freezer to be unpacked and sorted later. 

Well, as you can guess, "later" never got here, so I have been digging through bags of frozen meat for months, trying to find what I was looking for, until the whole thing was just a mess.  I knew I needed to pull everything out, sort it, and organize it so I would know what I had on hand.  But who wants to do all that??

Then this past week, as I was digging through the freezer for something to thaw to cook for dinner, I decided to pull out just the packs of hamburger and put them in the door of the up right freezer.  Then I pulled out the frozen vegetables and sorted them.  Then I started emptying the bags and sorting the rest into their types.  And literally in a matter of minutes, it was done.

I wonder how many other molehills we have in our lives that we make into mountains in our minds?  I was reminded of the 10 spies from the children of Israel who went into the promised land to spy out the land, and when they came out, they told about how great the land was, but the people, they said, are giants.  "And we were as grasshoppers in our own sight, and so we were in theirs." 

Maybe my mountains aren't mountains after all, maybe I'm just too small in my own sight.

I hate to admit, at least publicly, how many things I have on my "to-do" list that I've been putting off and putting off until they've become like mountains, always looming in the back of my mind.

Blogging has become one of those.  I love blogging, I really do.  But I don't have internet at home, so the logistics seem insurmountable.  And every so often I do one of those "I haven't been blogging for awhile, but from now on, things are gonna be different" kind of posts.  And then if I don't get right back on, the silence looms larger and larger, until it seems I have to have some wonderful, larger-than-life, perfect post to break the ice with.  Again.

But I've decided that if I can take one mountainous job and whittle it down to a do-able molehill, I can do it with others.

Like I stated, I have way too many of those on my "to-do" list. 

But I have one two less than I used to. 

Until next time...

Back to Basics--Couponing 101--How I Organize My Coupons

• She is like merchant's ships, she bringeth her food (and other things!) from afar


• She looketh well to the ways of her family

(coming up this week--reposts of where I get my coupons, part 1 & 2)

I admitted it, I haven't been couponing much lately. Last week I bought some groceries and used one measly little $.50 coupon--and it wasn't even doubled!

Why have I been so lax? Since I moved back to our small, rural hometown, the opportunties for savings are definitely lessened.

• Fewer stores, and with less competition, so prices are higher.
• None of the stores doubles coupons
• Since I'm home alone much of the time, I haven't been cooking much, and I'm using less of the things that generally have coupons.
• I've been using out of my stockpile of some items--which was plentiful when I lived in Georgia, most of which I brought with me.
• Better stores with more savings opportunities are in a city at least 50 miles away, and increasing gas prices make shopping there a less attractive option.
• Coupons have been fewer with much smaller denominations--and with no doubling, sometimes it hardly seems worth the trouble.

BUT---Sunday afternoon after a nice family dinner at my mother's house, all of us girls-my mom, my sister, my niece, and I--were sitting around the table looking at the sale papers. My niece was excited about a buy-one-get-one-50%-off sale on a make-up product she likes, and mentioned that she had a $2 coupon she could use. So when I told her that since she was buying two products she could use two coupons if she had them, and save even more---she was really excited! I ran home and grabbed my *envelope stuffed with coupons so she could look for the make-up coupon she needed, and it turned into a quick coupon lesson/intervention as we proceeded to go through the circulars, showing her how and when she could combine coupons with sales, stack store coupons with manufacturer's coupons, and use register rewards and extra care bucks to help even more. She was so excited, she compared me to one of the folks on the Exteme Couponing show--though I am far from that dedicated and/or obsessed!

*Yes, I admit it, my binder sits, empty and forlorn. Even my wallet sized coupon organizer is mostly empty, with only a few long term coupons left in it. I recently gave myself an intervention, throwing away expired coupons, and having a marathon clipping session to work through the stack of coupon inserts that I had left--unclipped and unused. However, I have a big stack of unsorted coupons, stuffed in a large envelope, because that's as far as I got.

And so, one of my tasks for this week, as a virtuous woman, is to re-organize my coupons.

1. Step one--Clip. Whether they're printed from the internet, in a newspaper insert, or received in the mail, they have to be clipped to be used.


2. Step two--Divide. Ideally, I stack as I clip, loosely into little piles all around me on the table, food categories on one side, non-food on the other. This can be as simple or as complicated as you make it. Food, non-food is obvious, but you still want like things together--cereal, frozen foods, etc.


3. Step three--Conquer. Even when all I had was an envelope, I had a little filing system to help me find the coupons I needed. If you have wallet style organizer, pull one section at a time, discarding expired coupons, adding in your new ones. With my binder, I take one page at a time, pulling the expired coupons (oh the shame of it--so many coupons that I let slip away until it was too late!) and filing the new ones.

And then--look out stores, here we come!

Meanwhile, here is my previous post about how I organize my coupons. (later this week I'll repost where I get my coupons, part 1 and 2, with some updates.)

When I first started couponing, I eased into it gradually. I started off printing a few internet coupons and sticking them in my wallet or checkbook; then I started using an envelope sorted loosely by category. I thought I had graduated to the big time when I got a real coupon organizer...



I paid $5.00 for it, it had about 12 little dividers that I used for my different categories. I really liked the convenience of this one because it fit in my purse; and because I always had it with me, it was easy to pull out when I found unexpected bargains and clearanced items. Unfortunately, it was just a little too small when I got into full swing couponing mode--it was hard to find coupons as I needed them, it was just stuffed too full and the elastic thingy it closed with kept breaking and stretching out.


So I finally broke down and and bought some baseball card collectors sheets and some photo sheets. I picked out my binder on Amazon (Case-it Large Capacity Blue Zipper Binder (D-145))and then I did what I do best--procrastinated about switching over until I just couldn't stand it any more--then I bit the bullet and drug everything out and worked on it off and on for two days straight!


I started off with some flexible plastic dividers, but I didn't like the way they stuck out, so right now I have no dividers, but I do still group everything by pages and general sections.

I have a couple of photo pages in the front for what I call "unusual" coupons--restaurants, or combination coupons--get $2 off produce if you also buy these two products, that kind of thing. Then I move to fresh foods--meat, produce, and bread--I don't usually have a lot of coupons for these products, so they're usually grouped together. I have a page for canned fruits and vegetables and related products; one for sauces, dressings, and condiments; packaged foods--rice mixes, hamburger helper, etc; cereal; baking goods; snacks; dairy; cold non-dairy --like rolls and biscuits; frozen. Within some sections I also group like products together--frozen foods may have meat and dinners, frozen breads, vegetables, and ice cream, for instance. Maybe not a separate page, but at least grouped together on the page. For non-foods, I have pages for shampoo, deodorant, lotion, bodywash, dental, etc, as well as paper products, cleaning, and laundry.


There are two main drawbacks to the binder system for me:

First, you do have to trim the coupons very closely, and some just will not fit without being folded. The photo pages are good for some larger coupons, I just don't have a lot of those, so I try to fold so that I can see the product and the expiration date.

And second is the bulk--right at first I was very self-conscious walking into a store with this huge binder--I usually have a large purse, too, so sometimes I wondered if it looked like I was moving in! I tried pulling out only the ones I knew I was going to use and leaving the binder at home or in my truck, but I constantly saw things that I thought "Oh, I have a coupon for that--out in the truck" And it's just too hot where I live and I am too old (!) to make multiple trips in and out just to retrieve coupons. I even tried leaving my purse in the truck and just taking in the binder and my debit card, thinking it looked less obtrusive to be carrying only one big old thing on my shoulder. That doesn't work, though, because I need that purse in the buggy to prop my binder on!

So I finally decided to just get over it and lug them both in.

And you know what? No one notices but me.

And the people who do, do a double take when they see me walking calmly down the aisle with my binder propped open on top of my purse.

Then they comment---"Where did you get that? I need one of those!" One older gentlemen even comment "You're one of those money-saving women, aren't you? I wish I had time for that!"

I have given many a quick lesson in baseball card sheets and zipper binders, standing in the aisle of the grocery store or drugstore.

Is it still a bit bulky? Yes. And sometimes when I'm making a quick trip, I do pull my coupons and leave it in the truck. But most of the time I take it with me. I put my purse in the buggy, open my binder and prop it on top, get my list in my hand, and away I go. I pull the coupons as I go, so I can make sure I'm getting the right product or whatever, and I slip them into a little pocket on the inside of the front cover of my binder. Sometimes I slip them into the fold on my list. When I'm ready to check out, I pull out my coupons and go ahead and zip up my binder and turn it with the strap up, ready to grab with my purse when I leave the store.

The good points for me far outweigh the bad--my coupons are organized, I can see at a glance what I have and what I may be short of, and it's ready at a moment's notice to zip up, sling over my shoulder, and go!
____________________________________________

Be sure to check the next two posts in this series:

Back to Basics--Where I Get My Coupons, Part 1

Back to Basics--Where I Get My Coupons, Part 2

Until next time...

This post is linked to:
Show Me How at It's a Blog Party

Homemaking Party at Don't Waste Your Homemaking

Three Steps to Organizing My Coupons

• She is like merchant's ships, she bringeth her food (and other things!) from afar
• She looketh well to the ways of her family

As part of confession earlier this week about what a mess everything is around here, I included my coupon binder. It's gotten away from me, big time. When I was home in the spring, I kind of got away from couponing very much for a while. The stores there don't double anything, and with me being home myself during the week, I wasn't buying many groceries, anyway. I really thought I'd get back into it big time when I came back to Georgia, because we have the perfect money-saving venues here--stores that double coupons up to $.50, good sales, lots of competition, and all three major drug-store chains in abundance. I haven't though. And I've paid the price, at the check-out line, too!

The final straw was a quick trip I made to Publix the other day. There was a woman who was getting multiple packs of Chinet dinner napkins down from the shelf, and she had a stack of coupons in her hands. We struck up a conversation about couponing, and she told me all about the great bargains she gets--like those dinner napkins, on sale B1G1, with two coupons, each pack would be only $.08. And French's mustard, also on sale, free after a doubled coupon. Can you believe, the nerve of her? Me, the coupon queen, being lectured about coupons by someone who doesn't have a binder yet? Oh, the couponing world is coming to an end, I assure you! ;0)

Later today, after I go to the pool and do my B90Days reading--I'm re-organizing my coupons.

1. Step one--Clip. Whether they're printed from the internet, in a newspaper insert, or received in the mail, they have to be clipped to be used.


2. Step two-Divide. I stack as I clip, loosely into little piles all around me on the table, food categories on one side, non-food on the other. This can be as simple or as complicated as you make it. Food, non-food is obvious, but you still want like things together--cereal, frozen foods, etc.


3. Step three--Conquer. Even when all I had was an envelope, I had a little filing system to help me find the coupons I needed. If you have wallet style organizer, pull one section at a time, discarding expired coupons, adding in your new ones. With my binder, I take one page at a time, pulling the expired coupons (oh the shame of it--so many coupons that I let slip away until it was too late!) and filing the new ones.

And then--look out stores, here I come!

Meanwhile, here is my previous post about how I organize my coupons. (later this week I'll repost where I get my coupons, part 1 and 2, with some updates.)

When I first started couponing, I eased into it gradually. I started off printing a few internet coupons and sticking them in my wallet or checkbook; then I started using an envelope sorted loosely by category. I thought I had graduated to the big time when I got a real coupon organizer...




I paid $5.00 for it, it had about 12 little dividers that I used for my different categories. I really liked the convenience of this one because it fit in my purse; and because I always had it with me, it was easy to pull out when I found unexpected bargains and clearanced items. Unfortunately, it was just a little too small when I got into full swing couponing mode--it was hard to find coupons as I needed them, it was just stuffed too full and the elastic thingy it closed with kept breaking and stretching out.



So I finally broke down and and bought some baseball card collectors sheets and some photo sheets. I picked out my binder on Amazon (Case-it Large Capacity Blue Zipper Binder (D-145))and requested it for Christmas--thanks, Chris--and then I did what I do best--procrastinated about switching over until I just couldn't stand it any more--then I bit the bullet and drug everything out and worked on it off and on for two days straight!



I started off with some flexible plastic dividers, but I didn't like the way they stuck out, so right now I have no dividers, but I do still group everything by pages and general sections.

I have a couple of photo pages in the front for what I call "unusual" coupons--restaurants, or combination coupons--get $2 off produce if you also buy these two products, that kind of thing. Then I move to fresh foods--meat, produce, and bread--I don't usually have a lot of coupons for these products, so they're usually grouped together. I have a page for canned fruits and vegetables and related products; one for sauces, dressings, and condiments; packaged foods--rice mixes, hamburger helper, etc; cereal; baking goods; snacks; dairy; cold non-dairy --like rolls and biscuits; frozen. Within some sections I also group like products together--frozen foods may have meat and dinners, frozen breads, vegetables, and ice cream, for instance. Maybe not a separate page, but at least grouped together on the page. For non-foods, I have pages for shampoo, deodorant, lotion, bodywash, dental, etc, as well as paper products, cleaning, and laundry.



There are two main drawbacks to the binder system for me:

First, you do have to trim the coupons very closely, and some just will not fit without being folded. The photo pages are good for some larger coupons, I just don't have a lot of those, so I try to fold so that I can see the product and the expiration date.

And second is the bulk--right at first I was very self-conscious walking into a store with this huge binder--I usually have a large purse, too, so sometimes I wondered if it looked like I was moving in! I tried pulling out only the ones I knew I was going to use and leaving the binder at home or in my truck, but I constantly saw things that I thought "Oh, I have a coupon for that--out in the truck" And it's just too hot where I live and I am too old (!) to make multiple trips in and out just to retrieve coupons. I even tried leaving my purse in the truck and just taking in the binder and my debit card, thinking it looked less obtrusive to be carrying only one big old thing on my shoulder. That doesn't work, though, because I need that purse in the buggy to prop my binder on!

So I finally decided to just get over it and lug them both in.

And you know what? No one notices but me.

And the people who do, do a double take when they see me walking calmly down the aisle with my binder propped open on top of my purse.

Then they comment---"Where did you get that? I need one of those!" One older gentlemen even comment "Your one of those money-saving women, aren't you? I wish I had time for that!"

I have given many a quick lesson in baseball card sheets and zipper binders, standing in the aisle of the grocery store or drugstore.

Is it still a bit bulky? Yes. And sometimes when I'm making a quick trip, I do pull my coupons and leave it in the truck. But most of the time I take it with me. I put my purse in the buggy, open my binder and prop it on top, get my list in my hand, and away I go. I pull the coupons as I go, so I can make sure I'm getting the right product or whatever, and I slip them into a little pocket on the inside of the front cover of my binder. Sometimes I slip them into the fold on my list. When I'm ready to check out, I pull out my coupons and go ahead and zip up my binder and turn it with the strap up, ready to grab with my purse when I leave the store.

The good points for me far outweigh the bad--my coupons are organized, I can see at a glance what I have and what I may be short of, and it's ready at a moment's notice to zip up, sling over my shoulder, and go!

I'm feeling re-inspired, so look for more bargain shopping posts to come!

Be sure to see Where I Get My Coupons, Part 1

This post is linked to:
Works for Me Wednesday at We are THAT Family
The Penny Pinching Party at The Thrifty Home

Until next time...

Three or More--Cabinets I've Re-Organized

• She looketh well to the ways of her household

Our house at home in Louisiana is an older house, built in 1962. I always say that it's just old enough to be lacking many of the "modern conveniences", but not old enough to be really interesting. No high ceilings and architectural details for us, just a cute little three bedroom one bath house in the country.
I have a fairly large eat-in kitchen, but because of the lay-out, not much countertop or cabinet space. Little by little over the years we've worked on updating what we can, and learning to live with what we can't.
Since we've been home the last few weeks, my dear sweet worker bee husband has been trying to do months worth of home maintenance and repairs, but somehow in the middle of his doings, he found time to convert the broom closet into more usable shelf space for me--and not only that, he painted it and put down the shelf paper, too. (I am from the eye-ball it, cut it, stick it the best you can and fix it afterward with a box cutter school of shelf-papering--he is from the get out the tape measure, builder's square and exacto knife and cut it perfectly school of shelf-papering. I just buy the stuff and get out of his way).
Then he painted and papered the dark hole of a cabinet under the sink, at my request.
And since I had to move stuff around away, I've taken this opportunity to clean and organize several other of my cabinets, too.
Our beautifully converted broom closet--the broom and mop can live in the utility room, this gives me more kitchen storage right where I need it--in the kitchen! Right now the larger bottom area holds my canner, cookie sheets and odd cake pans.

Upper cabinet above the broom closet--my pretty plates and serving dishes--close enough the the food action to be used more often, but easier to get to and put away.

And the keys are various door and vehicle spares, hanging on cuphooks. One central location for keys has been a time-saver--no more pawing through drawers and looking 27 different places for a set of keys that may have not been used in weeks.

More food storage--cleaned out and reorganized--now I have room to stockpile a few more of those sales items!


And last but not least--the "hole" under the sink is dark and dank no more! Isn't it amazing what a coat of white paint and new shelf paper can do?

My new storage is easy to use, easy to keep organized, and easy to clean. That works for me!

This post is linked to:

Three or More Tuesdays at the Gypsy's Corner

Works for Me Wednesday at We Are THAT Family

DIY Day at A Soft Place to Land

Until next time...

How I Organize My Coupons

• She is like merchant's ships, she bringeth her food (and other things!) from afar
• She looketh well to the ways of her family

When I first started couponing, I eased into it gradually. I started off printing a few internet coupons and sticking them in my wallet or checkbook, then graduated to an envelope sorted loosely by category, and finally to a wallet style organizer with about twelve dividers. (pictured below)

I really liked the convenience of this one because it fit in my purse; and because I always had it with me, it was easy to pull out when I found unexpected bargains and clearanced items. Unfortunately, it was just a little too small when I got into full swing couponing mode--it was hard to find coupons as I needed them, it was just stuffed too full and the elastic thingy it closed with kept breaking and stretching out.

So I finally broke down and and bought some baseball card collectors sheets and some photo sheets. I picked out my binder on Amazon (Case-it Large Capacity Blue Zipper Binder (D-145))and requested it for Christmas--thanks, Chris--and then I did what I do best--procrastinated about switching over until I just couldn't stand it any more--then I bit the bullet and drug everthing out and worked on it off and on for two days straight!



I started off with some flexible plastic dividers, but I didn't like the way they stuck out, so right now I have no dividers, but I do still group everything by pages and general sections.

I have a couple of photo pages in the front for what I call "unusual" coupons--restaurants, or combination coupons--get $2 off produce if you also buy these two products, that kind of thing. Then I move to fresh foods--meat, produce, and bread--I don't usually have a lot of coupons for these products, so they're usually grouped together. I have a page for canned fruits and vegetables and related products; one for sauces, dressings, and condiments'; packaged foods--rice mixes, hamburger helper, etc; cereal; baking goods; snacks; dairy; cold non-dairy --like rolls and biscuits; frozen. Within some sections I also group like products together--frozen foods may have meat and dinners, frozen breads, vegetables, and ice cream, for instance. Maybe not a separate page, but at least grouped together on the page. For non-foods, I have pages for shampoo, deoderant, lotion, bodywash, dental, etc, as well as paper products, cleaning, and laundry.



There are two main drawbacks to the binder system for me:

First, you do have to trim the coupons very closely, and some just will not fit without being folded. The photo pages are good for some larger coupons, I just don't have a lot of those, so I try to fold so that I can see the product and the expiration date.

And second is the bulk--right at first I was very self-conscious walking into a store with this huge binder--I usually have a large purse, too, so sometimes I wondered if it looked like I was moving in! I tried pulling out only the ones I knew I was going to use and leaving the binder at home or in my truck, but I constantly saw things that I thought "Oh, I have a coupon for that--out in the truck" And it's just too hot where I live and I am too old (!) to make multiple trips in and out just to retrieve coupons. I even tried leaving my purse in the truck and just taking in the binder and my debit card, thinking it looked less obtrusive to be carrying only one big old thing on my shoulder. That doesn't work, though, because I need that purse in the buggy to prop my binder on!

So I finally decided to just get over it and lug them both in.

And you know what? No one notices but me.

And the people who do a double take when they see me walking calmly down the aisle with my binder propped open on top of my purse.

Then they comment---"Where did you get that? I need one of those!" One older gentlemen even comment "Your one of those money-saving women, aren't you? I wish I had time for that!"

I have given many a quick lesson in baseball card sheets and zipper binders, standing in the aisle of the grocery store or drugstore.

Is it still a bit bulky? Yes. And sometimes when I'm making a quick trip, I do pull my coupons and leave it in the truck. But most of the time I take it with me. I put my purse in the buggy, open my binder and prop it on top, get my list in my hand, and away I go. I pull the coupons as I go, so I can make sure I'm getting the right product or whatever, and I slip them into a little pocket on the inside of the front cover of my binder. Sometimes I slip them into the fold on my list. When I'm ready to check out, I pull out my coupons and go ahead and zip up my binder and turn it with the strap up, ready to grab with my purse when I leave the store.

The good points for me far outweigh the bad--my coupons are organized, I can see at a glance what I have and what I may be short of, and it's ready at a moment's notice to zip up, sling over my shoulder, and go!


For more on organizing, see this week's Works for Me Wednesday at We are THAT Family.

You may also be interested in reading some of my earlier posts on couponing:

Where I Get My Coupons, Part 1, and Where I Get My Coupons, Part 2.

Until next time...