How To Organize Mail and Papers
Clutter attracts clutter. Once you leave one thing out, it acts like a magnet for other items. The interruption of the empty space tricks your brain into thinking that more items are welcome. One of the primary culprits of everyday clutter is mail. Mail and papers likely enter your home everyday, and not only do they attract clutter, but they often act as a stressful reminder of undone tasks. The key to managing mail and papers is a sustainable system that contains the clutter and encourages helpful habits to move them along. Here are 5 principles to help you organize your mail and papers—and keep them that way!
5 Principles for Organized Mail and Papers
1. Touch it once.
Mail and papers can often be discarded or taken care of in less than a minute. That’s why it’s best for the general policy to be, “touch it once.” As much as is possible, take care of incoming mail and papers immediately. It oftentimes does not take much longer to open and action the mail than it does to bring the mail inside everyday. And a lot of mail can be tossed immediately. You’d be amazed at how much more manageable your mail pile becomes when you simply filter out the trash.
2. Go paperless.
Ask yourself: does this even need to be mail in the first place? Many companies now offer paperless options, and I’d encourage you to always take advantage of that. There’s really no reason to hold onto paper documents when everything is available online.
3. Contain with purpose.
Once you’ve eliminated the unnecessary mail and papers, you’re left with what’s necessary. How do you organize from there? Choose containers that serve a purpose.
These are the categories of mail and papers in our house, and we have a container for each one:
- Drop Spot: For all mail and papers right as they come into the house, before sorting or opening.
- To-Do: After sorting or opening, this pile is for anything that need follow-up action. Bills to pay, phone calls to make, forms to fill out, parties to RSVP to and buy gifts for, etc.
- For Reference: This is the long-term storage solution for papers—in other words, a filing cabinet. It holds important documents such as tax records, certificates, legal documents, etc.
- For Memories: A place to put kids’ artwork and other valuable memorabilia.
4. Set limits.
Just like everywhere else in your house, make sure to implement limits with each of these spaces.
For example, the drop spot might be for “unsorted” mail, but it still shouldn’t contain any trash or easy-open letters. Make a habit of doing a preliminary sort-and-open of the mail right as you grab it from the mailbox (remember rule #1: touch it once).
Similarly, the filing cabinet doesn’t need to hold everything under the sun. Consult a good article like this one for what is important to keep and why.
And last but not least, don’t let your memories boxes get out-of-hand. It’s easy to want to keep everything of your kids’, but it’s usually not worth it in the end. A few select papers for each year is likely going to be enough in the long-run. If you’re struggling to let go of your kids’ papers for emotional reasons, consider alternative ways to keep it: take pictures of the papers to store them digitally, or get a kids’ artwork book for each year of their life.
5. Work in batches.
I often say that habits matter more than products, and this is no exception. It doesn’t matter so much which containers you use for your mail and papers as it does your cadence for addressing them. You don’t want to let them pile up too long, but you also don’t have to address them everyday. I like to batch up my “mail and papers work” and do it once a week. This is usually easier to fit into my schedule, but it also prevents the pile from getting too big and overwhelming.
What tips do you have for managing mail and papers?
For more organization guidance, be sure to check out the rest of my blog!
