Organizing Thursdays - Junk Mail

How much junk mail do you think you get on a monthly basis? Do you ever benefit from the junk mail you get? Do you look forward to getting junk mail? How are you dealing with all your junk mail? Do you pile it up and hope you will get around to it later?

Here are some tips on dealing with your mail crisis. First of all you need to deal with it in three ways. First, decide which needs to be dealt with like bills or correspondence. Have a set place for those items that way when you need to deal with it, it's easy to find. I have my bills in my organizer so when pay day comes, I simply pull them out, pay them and then file them for one month. After the next month's bills come in, I toss the ones I had filed previously. Of course you don't want to do this with ones you need to keep for tax purposes, and for those you should keep a separate file labeled Tax papers. Guess what when tax time comes around, those receipts and papers are in one organized place.

Second, you will have magazines or reading material you can't get to right at that moment and perhaps you save it for a later time, like before bed. You need to designate a place for those as well. Mine is a basket I keep in the bathroom or next to my bed. You might find one way to save money is to cancel those magazine subscriptions and just browse those magazines on the Internet. No paper to toss or recycle and one less thing to deal with when the mail comes. I do keep the ones I like for reference like home improvement projects we will complete at a later date or educational ones for the kids for homework projects. Again those all have a specific place in our home so it's easy to find. I do make a habit of tossing them at least a month or two after I have had them and have read them except for the ones I save. Trust me, I don't have much in the way of saved ones.

The third thing you need to deal with is junk mail. When my mail comes, I immediately deal with it right away. I don't put it in a pile to deal with later. Somehow we never get around to it and the pile begins to build. So by dealing with it when it comes, I don't have to deal with piles around my house. So I open everything, put the bills in my organizer, put the magazines and reading material away and as for anything else, I toss it in the recycle bin. There mail is handled, done and no piles of mail waiting for my attention.

You can also opt of of junk mail by emailing or calling the companies that keep on sending you stuff to eliminate more coming into your home. One handy tip is to refrain from all those free car offers at the mail or your local stores to win vacations. This will add your mailing list to not only their companies but some also sell your information to anyone willing to pay for it. So beware.

Hope that helps at least keeping your counter tops free from mail clutter and I look forward to chatting with you on next week Thursday for another handy organizing tip!