Getting my Coupons Back Together

I spent a good portion of Monday and Tuesday reorganizing my coupons and checking expiration dates.  I wanted to show a little bit about how I do that. 

I had ALOT of coupons to go through, since my mom sent me that package.

I keep my coupons in a large binder filled with baseball card holders and dividers.  I was inspired when I saw people with their's when I worked as a cashier.  I admit that it can be hard to keep up with, and I know that it is not the best system for everyone, but for the amount of coupons I have it works much better for me than one of those little accordian files.  I also like being able to flip the pages and see 18 different coupons at once.  Here is my binder.  I pretty much picked it because it closed (somewhat) and it was purple =)

So, I have this large stack of coupons that needs to go in this big binder.  How do I even begin?  Well, first I begin my seperating the coupons into food and non-food stacks.  Often, my three year old is more than happy to help me out with that part.  Once that is done, I begin further seperating them by categories.  In my binder, I have food in front.  I begin in the back by placing the coupons in each category right behind the divider for that category, but not stuffing them yet.  In this way, I work from back to front of the binder.

Once I place them all in their correct places in the binder, it is easy to close the binder up and take a break.  They are organized and out of the way and waiting to be stuffed.  I will work my way from front to back of the binder stuffing the new ones in and checking dates on the older ones to make sure they are not expired.  Sometimes I will pull out the ones that are expiring soon and sit them to the side so I can easily check through them first when I make my grocery lists (I usually do NOT lug this binder with me when I go shopping.  More on that soon). 

My goal is always to get this all done on Sunday afternoon while my husband is home, but that doesn't always happen.  Plus, I did not get these in the mail until Tuesday morning.  So, I was left to trying to get it done while my baby was napping, and my older girl was otherwise occupied.  On this particular occasion, she had asked me if she could fingerpaint.  I thought "Sure!"  We always do this art project disrobed and in the bathtub for easy clean-up.  So, I got the paints and paper.  She got undressed.  I left her alone to her creativity and went to stuff some coupons.  Well......