Tip of the Day

Cutting Coupons

If you read some of the "helpful" websites out there about coupons, they'll tell you that couponing shouldn't take too much time. Maybe 10-15 minutes to cut out and organize your coupons. It's too bad that they are all liars :)

I personally take about 45 minutes or so to cut out coupons (maybe it's not that long, but I watch old episodes of Lost online while I do it and can make it through a whole episode.)

Here are some tricks to quick cutting:

1. Get a LARGE and wide trash bag out and place it on the floor at your feet. I use my IKEA Take-Home bag (the big blue one if you know what I'm talking about.) It's stiff enough that it holds it's shape and big enough to allow no-looking-while-throwing-garbage-around cutting. Plus it's easy to simply dump the entire contents of the bag into your recycler when you are done. Now that I'm finished convincing you to purchase an IKEA bag...
2. Take out all of your ads...sometimes there's as many as three or four in one week's paper. Work with one ad at a time and collate your pages before cutting. Basically, take page one from all of the P&G ads, stack them together, and cut all of them out at once...much easier than cutting each page individually.
3. As you cut, try stacking the cut coupons in categories. Make a stack of refrigerated goods, bath and body items, medicine, etc.
4. Avoid cutting the bar code or numbers under the bar code...sometimes the stacks don't exactly line up, so it can be easy to mangle the bottom layers as you cut.
5. Watch for random coupons in the Parade Magazine or the inserts of the newspaper.

In the end, cutting the coupons in only half the battle. Coupons need to be organized in some way, otherwise they are simply paper scraps destined for the recycler. But that is another tip for another day :)