I’m a fairly organized person. My desk is tidy, the clothes in my closet are grouped by type and my important documents are arrayed logically in a filing cabinet.
The one thing I’ve never been able to get a handle on, though, is mail. After filing the bills and tossing the junk, I never know what to do with the rest. It just gets shuffled from pile to pile on the kitchen counter.
This being a new year and all, I resolved to get help. So I called Donna Smallin, a genetically organized person who wrote “Unclutter Your Home and 7 Simple Steps to Unclutter Your Life.”
Smallin had finished her third book, “Organizing Plain and Simple,” just the day before, so with a mind uncluttered with publishing deadlines and subject-verb agreement, she dived into my mail mess.
She started with an act of absolution. Disorganization isn’t a character weakness, she assured me; it’s just that most of us are never taught organizational skills. “But these are skills that can be learned,” she promised.
She recommended determining a time and place to open the mail every day. My habit of ripping open the mail while I’m taking off my coat obviously isn’t working, so Smallin suggested I change that.
It’s a good idea to have a wastebasket or recycling bin in that mail-opening place, she said, so junk mail, envelopes and such can be thrown out immediately.
Next, create a tickler file. “I could not live without my tickler file,” Smallin confided.
The file, she said, should consist of two sets of folders. One set would have a folder for each month of the year; the other would have a folder for each day of the month.
Store both sets of folders in a filing drawer close to where you open the mail. That way, you can slip each item into the file that corresponds with the date or month it’s needed. Bills might be filed on payday, or whenever you plan to pay them; an invitation that you’re waffling on could be filed on the date the response is due; photos that you want to take to your best friend could be filed on the day of your next lunch date.
The only trick, Smallin said, is to remember to check the tickler file every day. She still has a sticky note in her planner that says “Check tickler,” which she moves from day to day.
If your household has other people, Smallin recommends getting a vertical organizer to sort the mail. Put it in an accessible place, and label a slot for each family member. You might label additional slots according to actions, such as “read,” “pay,” “file” or “respond.”
Don’t bother putting magazines and catalogs into the “read” slot, though. You’ll never follow through. Put those items where you do your reading, Smallin said–the living room, your nightstand, your briefcase or even the bathroom.
The important thing, she said, is to make a decision about each piece of paper that comes into your house. It’s easier to be decisive when you’re not trying to cook dinner and answer homework questions at the same time, so try to open the mail when you can focus on the task.
And don’t be afraid to throw things away, Smallin said. The Internet and libraries give us such easy access to information that it’s no longer necessary to squirrel away every tidbit and tollfree number.
“Just because information comes to you, ” she said, “doesn’t mean you have to save it.”
