How do I manage to find enough time for work, my child and his activities, household responsibilities, personal goal fulfillment and God forbid-ME time?  Throw in homeschooling, college classes, blogging and couponing and any semblance of a sane, peaceful life would appear to be out the window, right?  Not exactly….There are a few things I’ve learned with regards to time management that help me accomplish all I set out to do, including COUPONING!

The way I see it, I can’t afford NOT to find time to coupon.  I get paid way too much to do it!  I recently had my best shopping trip ever at Publix.  I purchased $311 of groceries for $64.  If you factor in the time it took me to create my spreadsheet, search the deals, get my coupons in order and actually shop it equals approximately $62/hr!  Do I need that much stuff?  No.  It was for me, my family, Christmas gifts (I’m doing baskets of coupon shopped items for everyone!), and the food pantry our coupon club started.  It was a great feeling to be able to have my money go that far!  And it didn’t take that much time and effort on my part to make it happen.

More days than I care to admit there is a feeling in the back of my mind of being unproductive because the to do list grows faster than I seem to be checking items off.  But, slow and steady does win the race.  I keep a constant eye on the to do list just as I do the bottom line budget.  Here are a few tips to help with the personal organization to help you regain control of your schedule and hopefully see how you CAN find time to coupon.

1.  Get Organized-Make lists, charts, spreadsheets, or whatever it takes so at any moment throughout your day you can see what has been done and what still needs to be done.

2.  Make a General List-For example, on my to do list today I have:  work, swim laps, trial run for cooking contest, research HT Super Doubles, work on two new websites, curriculum for this year’s homeschooling, finishing this article, cooking and picking up as I go.  I use a wonderful Day Planner called The Well Planned Day where I keep this general revolving list updated at all times.  For me writing information down is soothing.  As soon as something is written down, I can let it go. This simple act is almost as satisfying as actually accomplishing, or finishing, whatever it is that’s on that list.  I am free to think of other things I need to do without worrying about forgetting to do something!

3.  Multiple Notepads-The easiest way to keep track of things is to have a small notepad for specific areas. Here are the notepads I use:  one mini pad for my purse; one notepad in the downstairs kitchen drawer so it’s handy for bright light/idea moments as I’m cooking, cleaning, being a mom and remember what we need or have to do; one notepad for all of my blogging ideas/issues/articles/to do’s and everything else that comes up site related; one homeschool notepad I keep with my Day Planner.

At the end of the day, I consolidate all of my lists in the Day Planner by priority.  This accomplishes several things:

A.  The act of typing (or rewriting) helps to remember.
B.  Consolidating the lists helps determine whether several errands can be combined into one trip, saving gas and time.
C.  People who think about something right before bedtime may come up with new solutions to problems while they dream.  I can sleep much better knowing everything is under control and nothing is forgotten.  (On the other hand, anyone who finds it difficult to fall asleep with this method should type up their to-do list earlier in the day.)

There are a few other things you can do in your every day life to help you from getting overwhelmed and giving up on time to coupon.  One of the most important is, don’t check email first thing in the morning. Get some work done first since mornings are often when we function best.  Disown your phone.  Leave a voice mail message that quickly explains when you will be checking voice mails and returning calls.  Limit Reading Time.  You cannot consume and produce at the same time. So, limit the amount you ingest in order to be able to output more. Information overload is an extremely controllable problem.

Sign up for Google Reader and add a subscription for all the blogs you love to follow.  That way you get a brief rundown of all the entries on coupon deals or parent life or whatever it is you are interested in reading about on every site in one convenient place.  Practice keeping your inbox at ZERO! Your email inbox should be just that – an INbox. Not a big collective storage place for forgotten items. Learn to handle, delegate or move emails and get them out of your inbox.  Practice TRAF. This is trash, refer, act, file. These are the 4 choices you have when dealing with any incoming communication or action item.

Assign times to tasks on your to do list.  If you have one hour all week to prepare coupons for shopping then that’s all you have and make the most of it.  Don’t spend all  your time looking for deals and coupons on the internet.  I know that sounds like a crazy idea!  Seriously, find 4-5 sites that specialize in the stores in your area you frequent regularly and follow them a few times a week, usually when a new sale is starting.

Work in focused batches. You’re not working when you sit at your computer and move your hands. Instead of this long-winded work-day, break it up into focused batches.  For example, Kroger adds go Sunday to Saturday in my area and Publix and Harris Teeter run Wednesday to Tuesday.  I search for Kroger adds on Sunday evening or Monday evening.  I search for Publix and HT on Tuesdays.  This breaks up the time spent couponing.  Use leverage.  Any task that you do, ask how can you utilize the time spent working on that task to either accomplish another thing or alleviate the need to do that task again.  Find out when the trucks run at the stores you go to most often.  That way if you arrive the chances of them having the items in stock  you need are greater and time is not wasted.

Outsource.  I do get a newspaper on Sundays.  However for items on sale at rock bottom prices or that I absolutely love I use a coupon cutting site, www.couponbeat.com.  The lady that owns the site is Crystal and she has most of the coupons needed for my area sales.  I go on her site and see how many she has in stock and order.  She ships them and I receive them within a couple days in plenty of time to still use them for that rock bottom sale price at the store.  She cuts the coupons for me.  For the coupons you collect from buying a newspaper weekly, I have tried both clipping and filing coupons and filing whole inserts by date.  It has been my experience that filing whole inserts by date saves tons more time!  It does feel a bit disconcerting I have to admit, but it’s much more efficient.

Make a spreadsheet before you go on your shopping trip.  Here is a spreadsheet I used for the Publix deal I told you about.  Use this as a template and when you sit down to look at the store’s sale list fill in this sheet as you do it.  When you finish going over the list, not only have you checked your list twice but you have also already created your own shopping list, a list of needed coupons for you to pull and you will know how much your trip is going to cost and you haven’t even left the house yet!

Remember when you first start couponing you WILL have a learning curve.  Start slowly and commit what you can.  The important thing is to just try.  Don’t get discouraged when you don’t save 75% on your first trip.  I did not start having great savings percentages until I had been couponing at least three months.  After you have tried for a few months you will get quicker at the process and be able to fine tune it for your family’s needs.  When I first started I had to do several trips once or twice a week for a few months.  Because I started with no coupons and no experience shopping at stores other than Wal Mart.  After time my stockpile of coupons and my pantry stockpile started growing.  Now I’m down to one BIG trip per month and only going out when something hits rock bottom price on the I Heart Publix lists.  Old timers call this cherrypicking

Here are the best, standard sites for online coupons:  www.redplum.com, www.smartsource.com and www.coupons.com.  Of course you can also go to corporate websites for coupons on specific products you like, i.e. Target, Publix, Walgreens and others.

I know to a newcomer this is all information overload.  Pick the store closest to you, find their weekly sale list, print your list, collect your coupons and go.  Make it that simple of a start and try.  I guarantee the first time you save a chunk of change like $10-$20 you will be hooked.  Then like the rest of us you will be growing and learning, striving for that $0 total out of pocket!