Cleaning house

The Pathmark triple coupon event really made me miss using a binder; it would have been so nice to go to the store, binder in hand, just looking for deals. Instead I had to look online to see what other people were getting, pull the coupons, cut them all, and go to the store. Then at the store I invariably found something else that would be a good deal, so I put it on my list, headed home, got the coupons, and went back. Because of the limit of ten coupons at one time, I still would have had to make just as many trips, but the pre-shopping prep probably would have gone a lot faster.

I'm not willing to spend all that time cutting coupons and organizing my binder, though! I did decide that when I need a coupon, I will pull out all the matching pages from all the inserts, cut every coupon on the page, and file all the unused ones in the binder. That way I don't have half-cut pages floating around, driving me nuts, and any coupons I don't use in the store can also be filed. It also gives me a place to put blinkies and peelies and tearpad coupons and catalina machine coupons and things from mailers and all those other bits which never have a place to go and so pile up on my desk and in my kitchen and on my dresser.

Last night I gathered up everything I could find in the house, cleared out my binder, and filed everything away. Today I am afflicted with a migraine and am feeling generally useless, so I tackled clearing out the file cabinet where I have my older whole inserts sorted by date.

I turned this:

Into this:

and of course, put that into my binder. And then, I could put all my newer inserts into the file cabinet, cleaning up the visual clutter on my desk a lot. Yay. Honestly, clutter that's hidden doesn't bother me all that much, but I can't deal with visual clutter!

Now, if only I could figure out what to do with all my old receipts... I don't like to throw them away, because a.) I donate items and keep receipts for tax purposes and b.) sometimes rebates come up weeks or even months after I've purchased something. But my receipts are a crazy mess, everywhere.