The kids bring home lots of school work and notices to parents and then you add the mail and all the junk mail which can lead to a lot of clutter! In an effort to tame the paper clutter, I go through the mail each day while standing in front of the trash can. I sort them the mail into these categories.
- To do (bills to pay, invitations to respond to)
- To file
- Unsubscribe!
- Trash
Pretty self-explanatory, right? I have file folders for to do, to file, and unsubscribe. Higher priority ‘to do’ items go to the front of the ‘to do’ file folder and I go through the folder at least every couple of days. I throw away all the junk mail except the catalogs I don’t want to receive any more. For those catalogs- I tear off the back page that includes the source code and key code and file that one page into my ‘catalogs to unsubscribe’ file folder and toss the catalog. In fact, there aren’t many catalogs I actually want to receive. If I want to see the new season’s stuff, I go to the store or to the store’s website.
CatalogChoice.org is a free site where you can unsubscribe from a zillion different mailings. Once there are a bunch in the folder, I logon to my Catalogchoice.org account and unsubscribe and then toss the catalog cover. It’s been very useful and I felt environmentally responsible to successfully unsubscribe from the ginormous Restoration Hardware catalog. There are one or two pesky catalogs I can’t get rid of like Oriental Trading company, but overall I highly recommend Catalog Choice to reduce the paper clutter from even entering your house.
