Making a Coupon Sorter

Every Sunday (well, just about every), I sit Indian-style on the floor and start clipping the coupons from my inserts. Then, prior to putting them in my binder, I separate them according to category. I’ll start category A in a pile here, and category B in a pile there…and pretty soon I am surrounded by little piles of coupons. And there will often be two category A piles and three category C piles because I forget where I put my first pile of each category (or I don’t remember even starting one).

This got me to thinking. How do I make a set pile for each category? So I came up with a coupon sorter.

First, using card stock (the blue is leftover from my wedding invitations), I printed out a bunch of little rectangles with each category title on it.

Then I laid the rectangles out on the floor in the same order they are in my binder.

Using my handy-dandy hole punch, I punched holes in them.

Then I cut some yarn into pieces that were about 6 inches long.

And I tied the rectangles together.

But I tied them too tightly together (I crossed it out so you know this is what NOT to do). This would look really cute if I was making a collage with photos, but since that was not my project here, I clipped the yarn and redid it.

This time, I left about 1 inch in between each rectangle. I tied together each column first then I attached the columns together and clipped off the excess “tails.”

And here’s how it looked when it was done. The lengths of the yarn weren’t all exactly the same, but it still came out looking pretty good an definitely functional. (By the way, you can see the shadow of my baby’s head in the upper right corner–he was in his bouncer ♥.)

Now the next time I had coupons, I was able to stack them up on their appropriate category. And since they were in the same order as the categories in my binder, they were easy to find.

And here’s a plus. It folded together into a nice neat bundle so I can tuck it away until my next coupon-clipping session. I’ll probably store it in one of the cubbies on the desk and put a paper weight (hey, I just found a use for a paper weight!) on top of it so it doesn’t fall out.

How do you sort your coupons before putting them in your binder?