Organizing the Mail
What’s your recommendation for organizing piles of mail?
1. First whoever’s mail it is has to do the actual organizing and cleaning up of the mail. So if your in charge of the mail, paying the bills, filing for you house of course go ahead with this project. If your husband though is the one instead, he really has to be there when you’re attempting to organize it. I start with this because setting up organizing systems won’t help him if he’s not involved in the process. It will go back to chaos.
2. Start with the newest mail first. If there’s mail there from a year ago or 2 years ago, start with today’s mail or yesterday’s mail.
3. Always open every piece of mail even if you know what it is. Discard the filler advertisements and envelopes- just keep what you need.
4. Sort it into action verbs that you can identify with. Some people use all of these, some of them only a few. Some make up their own action verbs. Here are the common ones.
- To do (urgent)
- To Do (non urgent)
- To File
- To Decide/Discuss
- To Read
- To Pay
- To Call
- To Enter (into Address book/Outlook)
- Garbage
- Recycle
- Pending
- To Shred
5. Once you come up with the action verbs that make the most sense for you or your husband -find trays, bins, file folders, or containers to label with those action verbs. That is where you will sort your mail into every day.
6. Yes, I said every day. Open and sort through ALL the mail every day. Then when you want to pay your bills you have them all safe and sound, or then when you have time to read you’ll grab something from your stack, etc.
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