There is no shame in collecting and organizing coupons. You should know that by now. Coupons help both the businesses and the customers. Businesses love it when customers use the coupons because this is data that could help them decide which products are sellable and which products are not. There is profit here, too, though it doesn’t seem like it when you’re Tampa shopping because you get items for free. But believe us, no business would print out coupons and give discounts if there is no revenue there for them.

First, you need to define what kind of coupon collector you are. Do you focus on store coupons or do you like searching for coupons online using your trusty apps? Where are you going to use your coupons? Are they for food, for grocery, for leisure, or for clothes shopping? If you said yes to all of the above, you have your work cut out for you.

Collect coupons

There are a number of ways you can collect coupons. You can get coupons from the in-house magazines of grocery stores and malls. You can get or request coupons from your favorite merchandisers (just email them that you’re a loyal customer). You can receive coupons by subscribing to a merchandiser. You can also get them from your mails, as inserts of magazines and newspapers. Whichever way you decide to get your coupons, you must be very diligent in collecting them.

Prepare your “tools”

You can opt for a folder where to keep your coupons, but we prefer if you’re going to use a clear binder with pockets. This will help in the categorizing of the coupons. You can label the pockets accordingly. The categories you can use are: health and beauty, refrigerated and frozen, meat and produce, dairies, paper goods, pets, household items, snacks, and retail.

Add or remove sections as you want, so that it’s easy to find the coupons when you need them. Other tools are scissors to cut those coupons from magazines and newspapers, and a printer for printing out online coupons (though many stores accept the images of the coupons saved in your smartphones).

Declutter your coupons

Once a week, set aside a time when you can remove the expired coupons out of your binder folder. This ensures that you will not erroneously think that you have a coupon for a certain item when the coupons are expired. You also need to take out coupons that will have no use for you, and exchange or give them to someone who could make use of them. If you have coupons for diapers but don’t have a baby in the house, you may give these to someone else.