31 Days To A Clutter Free Life Day 3: Mail

Welcome to Day 3 of the 31 Days To A Clutter Free Life Challenge! If you want to find out what the challenge is all about or would like to read the previous posts simply go here.

Today’s challenge is tackling the mail. I’ll be very honest, I’m great at getting rid of stuff, but papers and mail is a different story. I do have a system that keeps it somewhat under control. I immediately try to toss out the junk mail so that I don’t have that piling up, but I could be doing a lot better. Here’s where I screw up: I open the bills and important mail, but I don’t toss them out immediately after dealing with them. I honestly don’t know why I do this. I guess I’m afraid I’ll need to refer to it again at some point.

So here’s what the mail pile on the kitchen counter looked like yesterday:

First I separated the mail into two piles: trash and keep. After tossing out all the trash, I narrowed it down to two more piles: bills/important and other. Anything in the other pile was either archived or placed where it belongs.

I also found a bin that wasn’t being used to place the incoming mail brought into the home.

Now I’m one of those weird people that likes to keep things off the counters so I decided to place my bin in a cabinet space not being used. Now this is a temporary fix, but I’m happy to have my kitchen counter cleared off.

I also plan on doing the following to control the mail:

Unsubscribe from various magazines I get

I’m not sure why, but I get several free magazines that I never even subscribed to.

Go paperless

I already did this with some of our utilities, but I know there are a few more I can also do this with.

Purchase a wall file

I’ll be able to place mail into different categories when it comes into the home. I plan on separating the mail into the following categories:

Important
Events
Coupons
Shred

This is the wall file I found on Amazon that I plan on purchasing. Isn’t it pretty?!

*Design Ideas Vinea Wall File

In case you are wondering, this is what my countertop looks like now. Awesomeness. 🙂

31-days-to-a-clutter-free-life-day-3-mail-after

If you want to join in or get more details about this challenge, check out Living Well Spending Less for more details. Let me know if you are also doing the challenge so we can cheer each other on!

*Contains affiliate link.