Organizing the Never Ending Mail Pile

Wow... has it really been 2 months since I've posted?  Sorry about that... I guess I'll chalk it up to the winter blahs, some unexpected events, and the fact that I was in my first trimester of pregnancy.  Yep, we are expecting #2 this August!  Now that I'm safely in my second trimester, the nesting instincts are starting to set in, and I have been doing a lot of organizing and cleaning.  I have been trying to clear out our spare bedroom, which will of course be the baby's bedroom.  What I have found out about clearing out one room is that you end up having to clean out and reorganize the entire house, just to make room for the extra stuff from that one room.  So, one thing leads to another, and the entire house gets cleaned and reorganized.

This organizing project is not directly related to clearing out the baby's room, but it's something I think most of us struggle with: the never ending mail/paper pile.  I have tried to get this under control for years and I always fail.

 

(This is not all of it)

 

First I tried the file cabinet method.  I bought a file cabinet with the intent of filing away each piece of mail/paper immediately.  Well, that never happened.  Then I got this smaller, desktop sized file box thinking I could just keep the important paperwork in there.

This worked slightly better, but I found that if I put something important in there that needed to be dealt with (like a bill) I would forget about it.  Out of sight, out of mind.  So I accepted that the mail pile was something that I definitely needed.  But then, I found that even within the mail pile, things were getting lost and forgotten.  And I knew that there had to be a better way of organizing it so that it didn't look so messy.  So, I implemented two things:

 

 

One, I started using binder clips so that I could put like things together.  For example, I clipped all of my bills together.  If I get another one, I can just add it to the rest.  That way, none of them get lost and I will have all of them together where I can see them and not forget about them.  I also clipped all of our tax paperwork together, all of my daughter's preschool papers together, etc.  You get the idea.

 

Two, I put what was left of the pile in this basket that I already had.  It is just the right size to hold the mail pile, and it also holds it upright so I can easily go through it and see what is there.

 

So I am hoping that this method will work well for me and that I can keep up with it.  It certainly seems easier and more doable.  How do you control your mail pile?  I would love to hear in the comments below...