[VIDEO]: How to Organize Your Mail (Part 4 of 9 Home Office Organization Series)

In this video I show you how I organize and sort the mail in my home office from checking it daily to sorting out the junk mail, bills, catalogs, etc to processing it weekly. This is part 4 of a 9-part home office organization series. Parts 5 through 9 are coming soon!

Click here to watch Part 1 (How to Organize Your Office Files)

Click here to watch Part 2 (How to Organize Your Desk)

Click here to watch Part 3 (How to Organize Your Desk Drawers)

Click here to watch Part 5 (How to Organize Your Office Closet)

Click here to watch Part 6 (How to Hide Wires & Cables)

Click here to watch Part 7 (How to Store Gift Wrap)

Click here to watch Part 8 (How to Organize Small Things)

Click here to watch Part 9 (How to Organize Batteries)

Click here to view all our Home Office Organizing & Paper Management videos

Thanks for watching and Happy Organizing 🙂
Alejandra

Video Details

Hi, everyone. I’m Alejandra from Alejandra.TV. And in this video, I’m going to show you I check my mail, process, and organize my mail.

But first, if you’re looking to get organized, you can check out my free organizing video series.

How to Organize Mail and Bills at Home

So when it comes to checking the mail, one of the biggest problems is people checking the mail and the mail just piles up and it stacks up and builds don’t get paid and then there are late charges and you waste money and there are like more papers around than you actually need.

I’m going to show you what I do here. I’m pretending like I just got the mail here. So I just stack the mail right here. And what I do is office upstairs and this is where I process all my mail.

So if I just got the mail from the mailbox and I’m not immediately coming upstairs to my office, I’ll just set the mail on the steps and then I’ll go like cook dinner or whatever I’m doing. And the next time I come upstairs, I’ll grab the mail from the steps and I’ll walk upstairs and then I’ll come to my office.

So when I come to my office, I have this little organizer right at my office door. If Ed is checking the mail, the first thing he’ll do is sort the mail, he’ll just like see what’s my mail and what’s his mail. If he checks the mail and he realizes this is my mail then he’ll just come here and put it in this organizer and walk away.

Sorting and Managing Your Mail

So if I’m checking the mail, I have a different process. I come in here. I check the mail and I give Ed his mail and then I come here to these trash cans and I have recycle, shred, trash. First thing is just sort it all out so I’m not left with junk mail and things I don’t need. So I’m just going to quickly look and see what is shred, recycle, or trash. Like this, I don’t need. This can be recycled.

Now, if there are any addresses, you can pull them off and put them in the shred bin and then recycle the rest or you can pluck them out, do whatever you need to do.

These Costco coupons I want to look at so I want to keep that. This can just be recycled. I really cross out the addresses or else I would shred that. This is something I need. This is something I need also. This is something I need. This, I want to look at. And then this can be shredded.

After sorting, I’m left with the things that I need to process, to pay, or to do some kind of action. So then I’m going to come to my desk right here and I’m going to come to my mail center. What I’m going to do now is quickly sort the things that I need to keep into this mail center right here.

The first thing is these catalogs. So I want to look at these catalogs so I’m going to put it in the processing section right here so I can look at it at my convenience. So it’s not really tied to like a deadline like I don’t need to go through this like the next month or so. So that’s why it’s in the processing because there’s no deadline.

The phone bill is due in a month. I’m going to sit down at my desk and I’m going to grab a red pen and I’m going to write on top of it, “Due on 2/15” and then I’m going to stick it in the bill drawer because this is a bill that I need to pay that’s due by 2/15.

I am going to stress to get into a periodic routine of paying your bills, like every week or every Sunday or every two weeks, whatever your schedule permits.

Next, we’re going to pretend like this bill has an error on it and I got charged an extra 10 bucks or something, so we’re going to put this bill in this Call/Ask/Cancel section because that means I need to call somebody and get that charge removed.

We’re just going to pretend like the next piece of mail needs to be filed. It’s something that I need to keep.I put it in my processing section because I need to process it. Obviously, I don’t need to file it by a certain date so that’s why it goes in it’s own processing section. So that’s how I’ve sorted my mail into the appropriate categories.

Organized Bill Paying System

When I’m going to go pay a bill, I’m going to come in here and let’s say that this one is due soon, I’m going to pay the bill. Pretend like I just paid it. I’m going to go to my shipping drawer. I’m going to grab a stamp and an address label. Put the stamp on there. Put this back. And then I’m going to grab an address label. And if you missed the video on how to organize your desk drawers, there’s a video on that that shows like my whole shipping drawer.

So we’re going to pretend like that is ready to go. So then this, you can decide if you want to file this or if you no longer need it, whatever you might decide. I’m going to file this. And now, it’s going to be transferred to the processing section for me to file.

Organizing Outgoing Mail

This is ready to be mailed. What I’m going to do is I’m going to – if I’m going to do downstairs and go to my mailbox, I’ll just go do that right now. If I’m not going to, then I’ll walk back to my little mail organizer at the front of my office and I’m going to hang it on the little corkboard. So let me show you what that looks like.

OK. So if I’m not going to walk down to the mailbox right now or if this is to be mailed in like two weeks or something then I’m going to come here and I’m just going to clip this to this binder clip and then I’ll put a little sticky note on it to be mailed like whenever it needs to be mailed.

So for example, you can see that this needs to be mailed on January 1st. So that kind of just hangs up there with a little sticky noter reminder for me to mail it on January 1st. And whenever I’m in my office like when I walk in or out, I see this like every single day. So there’s no way I’m going to forget to actually mail that on January 1st.

So that is how I process, sort, and organize my mail. If there’s something that you do to keep your mail streamlined and organized, leave a comment below and let us know what it is. And if this is your first time watching my videos, you can subscribe to my YouTube channel for more videos or check out my website at Alejandra.TV.

Thanks for watching and I’ll see you soon. Bye.

About Alejandra

Since 2008, organizing expert & certified life coach, Alejandra Costello has taught thousands of students in 132 countries how to get organized through her video-based training programs. Her YouTube videos have been viewed 100+ million times. Named 1 of the 5 most organized people in America by HGTV and "The Decluttering Queen" by Good Morning America, Alejandra's expertise has been featured in The New York Times, Oprah.com, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Good Housekeeping, Family Circle, Woman's Day, Parents Magazine, and CBS. You can read more about Alejandra here or see our Press page here.

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