Piles Cushions
SNAIL MAIL: Where do you put it all as it comes such that it isn’t unsightly?
Curious: Where do you all put incoming mail to your place of residence? How immediately do you deal it? How do you organize it? (Especially households with multiple mail recipients–I’d love to hear from you!)
Trying to keep down the CLUTTER! Unsolicited mail is a BIG problem for us… Magazines/companies that refer out your address once you’ve bought something from them is a big problem. It eclipses the important mail!
Even aside from the issue of mail piles (a mail sorter doesn’t seem to be a simple solution for us–not ample enough), where you do put your incoming mail when you first get it?
If we lay it out in the living room (e.g., on the back of the couch or on a cushion), it looks cluttered; kitchen counter–looks cluttered; on our bed–looks cluttered; on the work desk in our office–still appears cluttered…and that’s where temptation to pile comes.
And how long do you all keep old mail/documents/bills before you toss/shred?
Thanks for your answers!
I use two really cool old picnic baskets and made little dividers in one. Mags and junk mail go in one (gets looked at, oh, rarely) and real mail goes in the other. Everyone goes through and fishes for their own mail.
In my last house, I used an old tin “milk box” that was kept by the door for mags and junk mail. Prior to that, I was fortunate enough to pick up several discarded USPS post boxes and made a little “mail” center in the kitchen entry way.
I like things with “lids” because it totally hides the mail.
How long I keep mail depends on the mail — bills I keep for a few years, banking info etc. I keep for 7 years, important documents go in the safe or safe-deposit box. The rest gets burned in the burn barrel about once a week.
This is probably a wierdness handed down from my great-great grandmother — but mail never comes in through the front door, nor does it sit by it. GGGrandmama was superstitious and said that bad news always comes to the front door, but it should never be let in the front door. Friends and family come in the back door, and so does good news. So, even though ‘bills’ are always ‘bad news,’ bringing them in and keeping them by the back door is a little ‘Murphy Medicine.’
9FT jump from the sofa into a pile of cushions.
