Rules for Mail: How to Keep it Organized

Dealing with mail every day can quickly become overwhelming and disorganized. Here are a few rules to keep it organized.

Today is Day 24 of this crazy decluttering series, and I came very close to just bagging it. I’ve been very sick for the past several weeks, and many of the big decluttering projects that were planned simply did not come to fruition. I missed several days of work and lamented the fact that I could barely get out of bed, much less go up to the girls’ rooms and deal with their junk.

And now my youngest daughter has come down with the same crud I’ve been fighting. Poor thing. Plus, we have a big Halloween party coming up tonight, and I just want to go to sleep and not write this.

But then I realized that would be kind of like running a marathon and refusing to go further when you only have a mile left. I’ve come this far, and it’s totally stupid to quit, so I’m not going to. But I can’t promise you any earth shatteringly wonderful decluttering projects, because I simply haven’t had a chance to do them.

So I thought that today I would first update you on a couple of the earlier posts in this series. Not following along? You can find all the posts here: 30-day Decluttering Challenge

First, I mentioned that I bought a plastic bag organizer for the kitchen. Well, it came the other day and I put it up next to the broom and I love it. Isn’t it great?

If you want to buy one too, click here: Plastic Bag Organizer.

And after yesterday’s post on clutter hot spots, I got a bee all up in my bonnet to get rid of My Husband’s Gigantic Basket o’ Crap in the dining room. He was very kind to pause the grading of music appreciation papers and help me go through it.

The best part was that we actually threw most of it away! There was a pile to be taken to his office on campus, another pile that could be filed away in my office, and a few other things that belonged elsewhere in the house, but most of that great big basket was just plain garbage!

And boy did it ever feel good to get rid of it.

Want to see how I’m utilizing that basket now?

I decided to put it under the sideboard in the dining room and fill it with tablecloths. I actually had a different basket full of tablecloths before, but it had seen better days, and besides, I liked his basket so much more.

While we were going through My Husband’s Gigantic Basket o’ Crap, I was a little appalled at all of the unopened mail I found in there. That fact, along with the photo of my radiator from yesterday gave me the idea to talk about dealing with the mail today.

My kids love to get the mail. The problem is, I have never designated any set spot for them to put it. Sometimes they throw it on the radiator (most of the time), but sometimes they put it on the couch or the dining room table or my desk. And sometimes I am unaware that they got the mail and I don’t know where they put it, so it gets misplaced.

I imagine that the mail I found in My Husband’s Giant Basket o’ Crap (MHGBOC) was mail they originally put on the dining room table. It got mixed in with some of my husband’s papers, and then he threw it into MHGBOC where it never saw the light of day again.

Luckily for me there were no actual bills. Just mostly junk mail. So now we have new rules for the mail.

Rules for Dealing with Mail

• Have a designated spot for it.
• Make sure every person in your family who will possibly get the mail out of the box knows where that spot is and actually puts it there.
• Have a designated spot for bills, mail that needs to be filed or acted upon, and coupons.
• Deal with it daily—open everything and either shred it, recycle it, or place it in its designated spot.

The pile of mail you see there on my radiator from the other day included no bills, a few credit card offers, a statement of my airline miles, a bank statement, a very important action item from HR having to do with our insurance, and a Kohl’s coupon.

I shredded the credit card offers and the airline miles statement. They offered for me to use them to purchase magazine subscriptions, but no thank you! I have enough magazines and don’t need more. I put the bank statement and the action item from HR into my inbox to deal with on Friday (today), and I put the coupon into my designated coupon spot, which is my wallet. If it’s not my wallet, I will never use the dang things.

There were also two catalogs, one of which I recycled and the other which I am saving to look through but promise to toss it as soon as I do. Especially since it’s highly unlikely that I will actually purchase anything out of it!

Clutter, you know?

How do you keep your mail from getting out of hand?

Find all of the posts in this 31 Day Challenge here: A Place for Everything: 31 Days to Less Clutter and More Peace.

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