Don’t go out and buy a guillotine just for this!  It’s not worth the expense.  But since many of you are homeschoolers, I suspect more than a few of you already happen to have one.  If this is you, they’re a great option for cutting out all those internet coupons you printed.

There always seem to be a few sheets, though, that only have one or two coupons on them instead of the three that comprise a full sheet, and I wanted the most efficient way to tackle that, while saving the most blank paper for scratch paper.

Here’s a step-by-step of what works for me.

Start by stacking all of the “matching” coupon sheets on top of each other neatly.  (By “matching,” I mean all from the same source so they line up with each other.  You can’t stack SmartSource with Coupons.com, for instance, because they don’t cut in the same place.)  Make sure all sheets with only one coupon are on the top, sheets with two below that, and full sheets below those.

Then trim the excess from the sides if that’s something you’re planning to do.

Now, starting from the top of pages, trim off the excess at the top of the page.

Then, still keeping the sheets neatly stacked, cut off the first coupon at the top of the page.

Carefully remove the now-blank sheet(s) from the top of the stack, then slide the pages up and first trim off the strip from between the top and second coupons…

…then cut off the next coupon.

You will probably have a new “blank sheet.” Again, carefully lift this off the stack, and trim the strip from between the two rows of coupons.

In order to trim the excess off the bottom, you’ll probably have to rotate the whole remaining stack so it’s upside-down, because otherwise there’s nothing to hold onto, but do that and you’re done.

It’s pretty quick this way!