Part
2: Organize Small To Profit BIG- The Incoming Mail 'Pile'
By
Cynthia Fooshe
Magazines, newspapers and incoming mail are the big three household
items that consistently create organization and storage challenges
in the home. Small changes in how the mail is handled daily can
make a big difference over time and potentially save money by avoiding
late payments, lost checks and eliminating a source of stress and
worry.
Incoming mail creates challenges for all of us. It’s often
picked up at the end of the day when you’re tired and don’t
feel like facing relentless bills or anything else that shows up
in the mailbox. So, the incoming mail is placed on top of ‘The
Pile’. ‘The Pile’ consists of all the unopened
mail that you had every intention of going through last week-end,
or the week-end before that, but couldn’t make the time or
find the energy. So now ‘The Pile’ has built up into
something quite scary. You look at it and wonder, “How many
overdue bills are mixed in with the endless credit card offers
and mortgage refinance pleas? Could I possibly have thrown
out the tax refund check with the junk mail?”
One solution to the never ending stream of junk mail is to get
off mailings lists and avoid subscribing to magazines you know
you won’t have time to read. It’s cheaper to buy the
occasional issue on the newsstand than to endure those stacks of
unread magazines.
The best solution, however, is to implement a simple daily procedure
for incoming mail. The best time to do this, of course, is right
after you walk in the door with the mail. If, however, the dog
must be fed or the cat threw up and/or company’s coming over
right away, make sure you have a dedicated ‘staging” area
to store the mail until it can be sorted and processed. Try NOT
to go to bed with the mail still in the staging area.
Your mail staging area should be in an obvious location so the
mail cannot be easily avoided. Examples include the kitchen counter,
table or other surface that is normally kept clear. The point is
that it should be staged in a spot so that it will be unsettling
or disturbing to you if anything that doesn’t belong is left
there.
The next step is to sort the mail, first by recipient (if more
than one person in the household receives mail). Create separate
stacks for each person and DO NOT throw out any mail addressed
to another person, no matter how tempting it may be to dispense
with political solicitations right away, without first asking permission.
The next step is to process your stack of mail. Go through the
stack top to bottom and make a firm decision on each piece. If
it is obviously trash or junk mail (you may need to open it to
be sure) shred it and/or throw it out. Special note: Make
sure you don’t throw out any traffic tickets from the police
department who contracted with an out-of-state company to run their
automatic speed trap cameras and used the same style envelope and
return address format as junk mail companies (I don’t make
this stuff up). This can create a big and expensive problem for
you!!
Separate bills and other maybe important items into a separate
stack. Open each bill and maybe important item, read it and decide
where it should go. It’s best to deal with each piece of
mail only once and decide then and there how it should be handled.
This, of course, requires a good system to file incoming items
that need to be saved. Bills, in particular, can create expensive
problems if they are not handled in a timely manner.
A simple way to handle bills is to mark the due date on the outside
of the envelope. For example, write “____ Due 6/15/08” at
the top of each bill. The underscore in front gives you a place
to check off the bill once it’s paid. If you pay bills
once or twice a month, this provides an easy way to sort bills
by due date and never miss a payment. If you save statements, you
can write the amount and date paid on the outside of the envelope
and file it in a paid bills file, drawer or envelope depending
on what works best for you. This approach keeps you from having
to go through the stack multiple times searching for bills you
thought you had paid.
Done on a daily basis, the above process takes only a few minutes
and a huge benefit can be realized over time … no lost paychecks,
no late payments and, more importantly, the peace of mind that
comes with never again having to face ‘The Pile’.
So, let’s get that mail sorted, organized, bills actually
paid when due and profit BIG!
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