The one thing I hear time and time again is “how do you manage all the paper?”
• The junk mail
• The bills
• The kids school papers
It’s endless I know.
I tell people that they need to have a command central spot where you can dump and sort. This is the place where you can unload the mail, etc. and sort them into categories before they go to their final resting place.
For me it’s in a high traffic area so I can quickly dump everything that comes in the door. This is a place that I pass by it all the time and am constantly reminded to sort the piles and get them to their rightful place.
Mail:
I get the mail, sort the junk from the bills and put my bills all together.
Junk goes straight to recycling. Bills go into my office. Other mail gets looked through right away and pitched if I don’t need it.
Kids School Work:
When the kids get home from school I immediately take all their stuff out of their backpacks and put all of their school work in one pile to go through later.
Once I get a chance to look at it, I pitch what we don’t need and keep anything they’ve worked on for my husband to look through later. I give him until the end of the week to go through this pile before it gets recycled.
Try to keep this routine up all week and you will be amazed how your piles quickly disappear.
Michaela
A more simple solution – take 5 minutes to sign up for a service that will minimize the junk mail you receive. I hardly get any anymore. Next, sign up for online billing, or better yet…automatic payments…so there are no bills. Can’t speak for the school papers because I don’t have kids. But really, in this day and age…you shouldn’t be getting that much mail at all. And if you manage things properly online (unsubscribing to promotions, opting out, etc) you shouldn’t have much clutter there either. This whole post seems like a stretch…I’m too busy!!! Not for mail. You simply don’t have to let this be a bother with modern technology.