The Postman always brings twice …. as much junk mail.

Does this sound familiar? Your mail contains bills, the rare correspondence, MAYBE some money, and lots – LOTS of junk mail.

One of the top five clutter culprits is junk mail. Fliers, brochures, credit card offers, and catalogs clutter our mailboxes everyday. I see tons and tons of this unusable paper at my clients all the time.

It is tempting to grab all the mail and think, “I’ll just go through this later,” and toss it on the counter. There it is – CLUTTER. Rarely do we go through that mail that day. Instead it stacks up and spreads out. It starts on the kitchen counter, then on the dining room table, and next thing you know, its littering a coffee table or an end table. And the worse offense is when it ends up in stacks on the floor.

If this happens to you, don’t fret. There is a quick simple solution. When you have your mail in your hands for the first time, go through it. Do not set it down anywhere. Take three to five minutes to sort it into categories: bills, cards/letters, junk, and other. Open the bills, throw away the inserts, and file the bills where you keep them. Open the cards/letters, take a quick glance, and put next to a chair for reading later. And the junk mail – a quick peek to determine if you are at all interested, then throw away the stuff that is not useful. File the junk mail with your bills (more on how to organize personal paperwork in the future blog).

The fewer times you have to handle your mail, the least likely it will turn into clutter. And “neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays (these organizers) from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.”