Actually ~ that's probably not entirely true. It started by flicking through the On-Demand TV shows and stumbling across Extreme Couponing.  My friend, Shannon, had mentioned the show to me months ago but I never was able to catch it when it was on and I never really thought it would be On-Demand.  When I saw it on there, I decided to watch an episode . . . it was only 30 minutes.  :)

Now, when they say EXTREME they mean INSANELY EXTREME.  These people spend more time than I have and they store more than I would ever have room for in this house (although we are adding room for a large pantry to the qualifications for our next house!).

I couldn't help watching and thinking, "I can do that" the entire time.  I had tried The Grocery Game a while back and actually started to have some success with it.  I just got lazy - pregnant and lazy - and decided to shop at Aldi's instead.  Then, well, I just kind of stopped using coupons.

One of the biggest problems I had with coupons was that I could never find them.  I tried saving the inserts and writing the dates on them but I never wanted to put the effort into finding the coupons when I needed them and clipping them out.  I also tried putting them all in a shoe box alphabetically - but they would stick together and I would end up with a lot of unused and expired ones.  I never really wanted to do the "binder method" because I really thought that was for those "Crazy, Die Hard" coupon ladies.

Then I started talking to some friends on Facebook.  I started exploring different ways to organize my coupons.  I started looking at pros and cons...and knew what I had to do.

I'd now like to introduce you to my coupon binder.  I'm contemplating naming it because I have a feeling we are going to be spending a lot of time together.  :)