The Art of Couponing

For the past several months I have been trying to turn over a new leaf.  A money saving leaf.  In my 24 years of married life I have never used coupons on a regular basis.  But at the first of the summer I started seeing the facebook money saving posts of my friend Houston Coupon Boy  and I decided it was time to try again.  So I took a couple of couponing classes, and got a newspaper subscription for 5 Sunday papers. (Hey, I'm from Texas--we do everything BIG!)  I started clipping, and saving money.  It felt really great!  I got excited about the great buys I found and would talk about how much stuff I got for how little of money.  I was becoming a couponing nerd.

And then reality hit.  I didn't mind using the coupons or looking for the bargains.  But after a few weeks the sight of this: 

I just wanted to doing this:

Why?  Well Let's face it, instead of doing this:

I'd rather being doing something like this:

I had burned out on couponing!  My coupons sit unclipped longer each week (right now I'm two weeks behind).  And on more than one occasion I have thought seriously about cancelling my newspaper subscriptions.  I love the money I save when using coupons, but I absolutely hate how long it takes every week to clip those stupid coupons and was about to declare my couponing experience over. 

But that all changed today.  I subscribe to a few couponing blogs that send me updates about the bargains they have posted on their sites.  While catching up on my couponing emails I discovered a post from Saving With Shellie that has me back in couponing bliss.  Shellie's ORGANIZATION TIPS describe a system that has you file each week's coupons together and then only clipping the coupons you will use.  Hallelujah!  I think I just found the solution to my hate of clipping coupons.  Can't wait to try this new system out.