I am sure that many of you can relate to the above picture, I know I can!
For me, convenience is the name of the game. I want the easiest path to accomplish my goal. In this case it is to purge all coupon inserts that have expired and either recycle those inserts or give them to one of the organizations that collects expired coupons for military families overseas. What I like to do is to determine which inserts have no valid coupons left in them and purge those inserts first. If there are inserts with more than TEN valid coupons, I will keep those inserts intact until the next purging round rather than take the time to go through and clip each and every one of those coupons, it is all about time management to me. If an insert has just a couple of valid coupons, I will decide if I would purchase the item if it were free or cheap and if so, I will clip those coupons and get rid of the rest of the insert. Here are a couple of VERY SIMPLE methods that I use to clean out my coupon insert stash:
QUICKY EXPIRED INSERT CHECKER
This is on the side bar of my website and allows you to quickly check which inserts have expired for each month of the year. It doesn’t allow you to see exactly which coupons are still valid but it is an easy method if you just want some quick information. You just pick the month that you want to check (1 is Jan, 2 Feb, etc) then the date of the insert and it will tell you if there are any valid coupon in that insert!
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MY MORE THOROUGH METHOD FOR CHECKING INSERTS
To see EXACTLY which coupons are still valid in the inserts that I am wanting to get ride of, I use this method. This has worked well for me for years and it is always accurate for me.
Here’s what I do:
On the coupon mom website, when you click on the insert database link HERE it will show you the SOUTHEAST REGION COUPON DATABASE. This is a list of all coupons that have been distributed in Florida (you can change the state to wherever you live).
- When the coupon database opens, don’t search for anything in the search box.
- Simply scroll down to the bottom of the INSERT LIST (not the printable coupons and all the other stuff) and you will see every available non-expired coupon listed in date order from newest to oldest.
- Scroll down the list to where the oldest possible coupons are. To the right of that it shows you the expiration date of the coupon. That gives you a good starting point to know which you can get rid of and go from there 🙂
You will find that there might be a couple of inserts listed that have one or two coupons in them. Just decide if those are deals you want and either clip the coupons out, save the inserts or pitch them. I personally will be getting rid of most of the oldest dates that don’t have may hot coupons in them and will only pull out the coupons I KNOW I will use.
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SO what are you waiting for? Time to get yourself back on track! Chop Chop!! 🙂
Make sure you check in on our facebook fan page or our facebook chat page to say hi and hang out with all of your coupon freak friends! We are having a blast over there!
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