7 Tips to Banish Mail Clutter Once and For All

April 15, 2016 1 By EngineerMommy

I hate a messy house! However, with two young kids and a busy schedule, sometimes it’s hard to keep up with the piles of paper that seem to accumulate around the house. Between junk mail, bills, kid’s artwork and more, there seems to be a never-ending pile of papers that float around the house sometimes. However, I have recently implemented a system that really works for our family! And I’m excited to share with you all how to do this in your own home, too!

Trust me, if you dislike paper clutter, you need to try these easy steps to help organize your home’s paper & mail piles!

7 Tips to Banish Mail Clutter Once and For All

1. Don’t procrastinate. It’s so easy to come home with a pile of mail and just decide “I’ll deal with this later”! Do this a few times and you’re left with endless piles of mail & paper. Vow to process mail as you receive it. Pay the bills, throw away the junk mail, and file important documents.
2. To reduce the amount of papers that make it into your home, try to sign up for paperless billing. Instead of receiving paper bills in the mail, you’ll receive online statements. This will greatly reduce the amount of paper mail you’ll have to deal with.
3. Use a multiple folder to system to keep like documents together. For example, you may have the following categories: car insurance, health insurance, utilities, taxes, credit cards, receipts, and so on. I like this 8-pocket folder for this purpose.
4. Avoid collecting magazines. It can be tempting to hold onto magazines from previous months (or even years!) but once you look at the magazine, clip out recipes, ideas, outfits, etc. you’d like to save. Then, throw away the magazine. You can keep your clippings in order with a gorgeous sorter like this!
5. If you clip coupons, keep them together in a wallet-sized organizer so you can bring your coupons with you when you head to the store. Organize your coupons by section of the store: dairy, freezer, produce, etc. This one is a great size and fabulous pattern.
6. Keep all your papers in one spot. Use a paper/mail organizer like this to keep items that need to be processed later on. This way, you’ll limit your papers to one spot, instead of strewn all over the house. A mail organizer like this is a great way to keep your incoming/outgoing mail corralled to one spot!
7. Maintain a monthly calendar to help you organize appointments, parties and so on. Then, you can throw away invitations, appointment cards, and so on without worrying about forgetting about an event! I love that this calendar is dry-erase, so it’s so easy to make corrections and use it month after month.

I hope these tips help you get your paper clutter in order! It can be totally manageable if you follow these simple steps that really don’t take that much time to implement. Now tell me: how do you keep paper clutter manageable in your home?!