You’ve Got Mail
Do you know that we receive more mail in one day than our grandparents received in a month? These days, it seems like an endless task.
The post office does a pretty good job of delivering a pile of decisions to you every day. On average, it takes ten minutes a day to sort through your mail and make those decisions. Should I keep this, or can I throw it away? Do you have the time to ponder these questions for every piece of mail you carry in your home? Do yourself a favor and make helpful changes now.
Decide to toss the junk as fast as you can. Pretend those envelopes have been sitting in your oven all day, instead of your mailbox, ready to burn your fingers. Remember “stop, drop and roll”. Use this lesson, ‘stop’ at the trash can or recycle bin, ‘drop’ the fliers, coupons, and anything else that’s junk, and ‘roll’ away with the important stuff. You should have much less in your hands to deal with.
Try this method with the mail that has piled up inside your home. Instead of ten minutes a day, try adding five more minutes to that time to make it fifteen minutes to help get through the backlog. Slowly you will see the pile decrease until it is gone.
Use these unsubscribing services to alleviate some of these decisions:
- Unsubscribe from catalogs CatalogChoice.org
- National Do Not Call Registry DoNotCall.gov
- Receive less mail DNAchoice.org
- Stop junk mail Eco-cycle
- Mailstrom
- Opt-Out Prescreen
- Stop junk mail app PaperKarma
- Clean up your inbox Unroll.me
- YellowPagesOptOut.com
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Janet Schiesl
Janet has been organizing since 2005. She is a Certified Professional Organizer and the owner of Basic Organization.
She loves using her background as a space planner to challenge her clients to look at their space differently. She leads the team in large projects and works one-on-one with clients to help the process move quickly and comfortably. Call her crazy, but she loves to work with paper, to purge what is not needed and to create filing systems that work for each individual client.
Janet is a Past Board Member of the National Association of Productivity and Organizing Professionals and a Past President of the Washington DC Chapter of NAPO were she has been named Organizer of the Year and Volunteer of the Year.
Janet Schiesl
Janet has been organizing since 2005. She is a Certified Professional Organizer and the owner of Basic Organization.
She loves using her background as a space planner to challenge her clients to look at their space differently. She leads the team in large projects and works one-on-one with clients to help the process move quickly and comfortably. Call her crazy, but she loves to work with paper, to purge what is not needed and to create filing systems that work for each individual client.
Janet is a Past Board Member of the National Association of Productivity and Organizing Professionals and a Past President of the Washington DC Chapter of NAPO were she has been named Organizer of the Year and Volunteer of the Year.
We don’t seem to get much mail now that most bills are sent by email and personal messages via email or Facebook, but I agree that staying on top of it is essential. Lucky for us, there’s a garbage can in our mailroom – I wish they’d replace it with a blue box, but at least we don’t need to bring it into our unit.
I also don’t get much snail mail anymore, but I’ve worked to get it down. A lot of our clients need help to do this so they have one less stress. I’ve had trouble lately with getting mail delivered so I’m working on finding work arounds.
I think one big part of my mail is requests for donations. I usually have to open a lot of those just to see if it holds an acknowledgement of a recent donation. I really need to limit the number of groups that I donate to. A precious few will limit the requests to once a year if you ask.
I’m sending this to my Dad! He gets a ridiculous amount of mail.
For my family, all of our military moves are beneficial for this specific thing… we don’t keep an address long enough for the mail to find us! 😂 Great suggestions and references. Thank you!
You’re welcome Jana. I hope the advice helps your dad.
I’m sure the military moves have kept you efficient!
I suggest that you only donate to your charities of choice during your birthday month. Give what you would for the whole year. Then you can look for the acknowledgments shortly after that. If you keep a tally then you’ll know when you’ve received them all. Then the rest of the year you can recycle all requests.
I’m one of those wacky people who LOVE getting mail and am disappointed on days when I walk to the mailbox to find there’s nothing there. (And today, on Memorial Day, I’m bummed because that means no mail on Sunday AND Monday.) But for most people, all that excess mail (like the charitable requests Jonda mentions, or credit card and insurance offers) means having to go through each envelope to verify the contents, and the prospect of it makes people put it off until the pile is unwieldy. Your advice and resources are solid for getting people unsubscribed!
Thanks Julie. For some people, too many decisions come in the mail each day – except for you! My mail delivery has become so spotty that I am looking into alternatives for everything I need to receive.