Comments on: Ask Unclutterer: Messy mail

By: CD Recycling « Mylifesamess's Blog

CD Recycling « Mylifesamess's Blog — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 22:15:23 +0000

[...] I was going to set up my shredder so as to have a nice little disposal center as suggested on unclutterer.com so that I can quickly deal with mail and paperwork when I get home each day. Then, I realized my [...]

By: Toni

Toni — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 19:35:34 +0000

A great read I twittered a link to this article. I posted a blog entry a little while back similar to this article. http://ow.ly/13w13

By: Jay

Jay — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 04:08:40 +0000

We have a P.O. box. Having a P.O. box has taught me that I do not need to look at mail every day. Once a week is sufficient.

By: TV James

TV James — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 02:58:24 +0000

Oh, and since burning is still allowed where we live, instead of a shredder we now have a “burn bin” by the fireplace where all of the personally identifiable bits of mail go to be used as firestarters.

By: TV James

TV James — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 02:57:37 +0000

We use a post office box for most mail. My wife’s weekly entertainment magazine comes to the house, but little else does. Junk mailers send far less to post offices, and in many cases, I can quickly, while still in the post office, rip my name and address off of junk mail and toss the rest right there in the trash without leaving the post office. (Is a shame they don’t offer recycling.)

Since I check the post office box on the way to work, when I get to work, or at lunch, I go through the rest of the mail. I have two folders in my laptop bag, a red one and a green one. Urgent stuff goes in red, the rest in green. All of the red ones I then enter into Remember the Milk with their due dates (title starts with “Red: “) so that I know when I need to have handled them by.

By: anonymous homeowner

anonymous homeowner — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 01:03:37 +0000

Not going carefully through every piece of junk mail I receive cost me several thousand dollars when my homeowners association sued me. As far as they — and the law — were concerned, I was ignoring their notices (even though I was paying my regular dues every month). But what happened to this woman was far worse:

http://www.ccfj.net/20-20priv.gov.htm

Winona Blevins, an elderly widow who lived in a planned community in Houston called Champions, was astonished when a constable came to her door one morning and told her he had a court order to evict her.

It turned out that the homeowners association had sold the house out from under her — because she owed $876 in dues. Blevins says she didn’t even know her home had been sold: “I had no inkling. Absolutely no idea. None.”

Blevins had paid cash for her home and had lived there for 15 years. But the homeowners association says she ignored notices they sent telling her she was behind with her dues. But apparently many of the notices had been wrongly addressed to her long deceased husband, who had never even lived in the house.

Blevins says mail did come to her house addressed to her husband, but she threw it away thinking it was junk mail. She says no one from the community association ever called her or came to her home to tell her there was a problem. Instead, the board turned the matter over to their attorneys, who tacked on thousands of dollars in legal fees and recommended foreclosing on the home to collect.

The association sold Blevins’ home at public auction without her knowledge, then had constables evict her with no notice. “They took everything. They said I could take one change of clothing, one. And they took everything else. Everything,” she remembers.

By: Lauren Halagarda

Lauren Halagarda — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 18:10:09 +0000

I second @chacha1 on using CatalogChoice.org- simply tear off the back page w/ codes and it takes 2 minutes to enter your preference to be removed.

I also recommend visiting http://OptOutPreScreen.org to opt out of credit card offers. You can always find them online if you need them and this will cut down considerably on junk.

Finally, one of the best ways to cut down on junk mail is to prevent it in the first place. Stop entering random raffles, contests, drawings, etc. and when you make catalog purchases, express your preference not to be added to the company mailing list.

Lots of little habits repeated regularly will help you keep your mail under control!

By: Lou

Lou — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 16:33:32 +0000

I have a very attractive old wooden bread box, the kind with a roll-up opening. IF life is too hectic or I am ill, mail not needing immediate attention goes in here. It’s out of sight, mess-wise, but I know what’s in there – mail that needs eventually to be dealt with: EOBs from the insurance company, quarterly bills, reports from IRAs charities I’ll respond to, those annoying blank checks from the credit card company. Very little of my mail demands immediate attention, since I have implemented the steps Erin recommends (declining catalogs, shredding at the door and automating where possible). IF stuff sits in the breadbox for a week or two, it’s just not a disaster. And there’s no clutter.

By: Karen

Karen — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 16:19:37 +0000

My New Year’s Resolution was not to bring any junk mail into the house. I sit in the car and sort it, and then dump the junk in the recycling bin before I come in. It’s significantly decreased the amount of recycling I have to take out of the house and put in the bin!

As for pets and shredders, my cat doesn’t like the noise the shredder makes, so he’s never bothered to investigate it.

By: Louise

Louise — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 14:29:01 +0000

We live on the road in our RV, and only get our mail about once every 6 weeks. Before we left, I switched 95% of our bills to an on-line bill paying service called Paytrust. We’ve been using it for about 8 years now with no problems, and it really reduces the physical mail.

I wrote it up in depth here:
http://ourodyssey.blogspot.com.....aying.html

By: Richard | RichardShelmerdine.com

Richard | RichardShelmerdine.com — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 09:52:37 +0000

Precycle sounds like a god send. I had a great idea once. Wouldn’t a fantastic invention ala Dragons Den be a device that attaches to the inside of your letterbox. It scans letters somehow as they come through your door and them emails you them. Or it could even just scan a barcode from the company which emails you and lets you now a letter has arrived. There has to be a market for that.

By: Mohan Arun L

Mohan Arun L — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 08:32:52 +0000

I clicked through from Friendfeed thinking by using the term ‘mail’ you meant email! But the article talks about paper/snail mail. I have never had a problem managing snail mail. I keep a diary with important things like bank accounts, credit card accounts, insurance, mortgage account, paypals, online email, etc. where I write down all passwords and other important updates as they happen with date noted against each, sorta like my own bank account’s blog. Like Received paper statement of monthly transactions on 3-11-05. etc. It quickly lets me view at a glance if there is anything important that I need to watch out for. For paper based things, paper based management is the best, I dont cross-manage stuff, like trying to scan the paper utility statements, bills, transaction summaries etc. and load them into computing devices. Paper is always remains as paper. The diary is there so in the event something happens to me, family members can go through the diary and know the passwords to do any urgent transactions with banks, etc.

By: SB

SB — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 07:48:35 +0000

I saw those slimline shredders at Amazon a few months ago. The reviews were, shall we say, cutting. Pretty but useless seemed to be the consensus.

By: Julie

Julie — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 07:11:15 +0000

I don’t know if this would work for many people but I simply choose not to check the mail every day. We have a locking mailbox and I only check the mail 1-2x a week. Originally this happened because I had a PO Box and couldn’t physically get to the mail each day. I discovered that just because mail comes everyday doesn’t mean I need to immediately check it. It is much easier to deal with the mail when you have a free moment to actually open/sort/recycle/file the mail. I know this wouldn’t work for everyone, especially those with non-secure mailboxes as well as those who may actually get something important each day but it works great for me.

By: Jeri Dansky

Jeri Dansky — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 06:06:53 +0000

@Just Breathe: I have a shredder intended to deal with the child/pet issues. See Fellowes’ SafeSense: http://www.fellowes.com/Fellow.....fault.aspx

(The shredder I have is this one, which you can get for MUCH less than the price shown on this web site: http://www.fellowes.com/Fellow.....Id=3227901)

@SB: There are some not-ugly shredders. See http://jdorganizer.blogspot.co.....style.html – but I don’t have any experience with them, to know how well they work.