Processing Shared Mail ... Need Ideas

Unclutterer ForumsUnclutter Your Life in One WeekMondayYour Reception Station

Processing Shared Mail ... Need Ideas

(9 posts) (9 voices)

Started 8 months ago by SimplerPlease
Latest reply from xarcady
RSS feed for this topic

Overall Rating: votes

Tags:

SimplerPlease
Member

My spouse and I are not always home at the same time. Sometimes mail gets looked at by only one person who either places it somewhere where the other person does not see it, or immediately handles it when the other person would have liked to see it and now knows nothing about it. We need a system! Right now I think we will try using containers to house opened mail. Of course, the fact that it's opened means the other person already looked at it. I think our container labels may read: HIS (she's done with it and HE can handle as he sees fit), HERS (he's done with it and SHE can handle as she sees fit), Ours (the person who opened this mail item thinks this involves some action and BOTH can review the container items weekly to discuss). The review night would need to be placed on the calendar as a weekly household meeting when we're both there.

While my spouse may pay the bills, sometimes I NEVER get to see the credit card bills and I would like to, so when he opens the mail, he can place it in my container, I can review it, then place back into his container, so he can then take it. Ideally it would be a daily to-do for both of us to handle the HIS and HERS containers, but the OURS would be a weekly to-do.

Does anyone else have ideas?

Posted 8 months ago #
Sky
Member

Or you could get paperless statements online where each of you have access to them.

Posted 8 months ago #
Rosa
Member

Would it work to have a place where the paid bills are filed, so you can look at the newest statements even if your partner paid them?

We alternate between one of us paying the bills (whichever of us has time) and sitting down together and both looking; we didn't always have that much time together, so waiting til we both reviewed things made them late sometimes, but I was uncomfortable always handling stuff without him seeing it.

Posted 8 months ago #
Parsifal
Member

A few years ago, we started putting all the mail, keys, etc. in the same place every day. It took some discipline at first, but has really helped out. Of course, we only pay one or two bills via snail mail and we don't usually alternate mailing them, so it's easier not to miss things.

Posted 8 months ago #
JayEff
Member

SimplerPlease, if you need a system, by all means find one that works for you. I am sure that someone here will have a great idea for one.

On the other hand, you might want to consider whether you need a system at all. You might want to look at how much non-junk mail you and your spouse actually receive and which pieces are problematic. Three bins for mail and a weekly household meeting might be more effort and work than the problem deserves.

Viewing bills online might help. Even if you receive paper bills, you can still view the bills online. Now that my wife and I receive almost all of our bills paperlessly, we have very little important mail.

Posted 8 months ago #
luxcat
Member

An alternative approach might be to set a time of perhaps half an hour once a week where you both sit down at the same table (ideally with the checkbook) and process all the week's mail at once. I process my mail once a week (I quickly sort out and recycle the junk mail, then all the possible "good" mail goes in a basket) and it's helped me use my time better. That way too if you need to communicate something to each other ("did you charge $14.79 at Starbucks on the 30th?) you can just deal with it then and there, no shuffling paper back and forth and opening yourselves up to miscommunications and possibly missed bill deadlines.

Posted 8 months ago #
bandicoot
Member

i think i'd go with the plan of sorting it daily into junk and real mail; then sitting down together for 30 mins once a week to open and pay/file/review each piece together.
it would save a lot of sorting and paper shuffling and avoid the whole "creating a system" thing.
you would both know where you are.
and the simpler it is, the better it is....imho.

Posted 8 months ago #
EraserGirl
Member

i'd go with a lot of the above suggestions...
paperless whenever you can

sort first class mail from everything else
i don't bring anything else into the house except for the odd catalog and even then they have a limit of ONE DAY.

a landing zone where important papers and first class mail gets dropped

the inherent problem is that once the mail has made it here, it may mount up and never get dealt with. the His/Hers and Ours piles sound promising.
but bills should always be OURS - my ex used to loose things he didn't want me to see, like bills and bank notices.

Indeed paying bills jointly once a week works well, we used to do it after dinner on sunday.

Posted 8 months ago #
xarcady
Member

What's your ultimate goal here? To see all bills before they are paid? Just to see all the bills that come in? Or just some bills? I've been struggling to figure out exactly what you want to accomplish with the new system, and I'm not sure what it is.

My take on your proposed system is that it would be too complicated for someone like me. "His" sounds to me like, "I'm done with it; I'll put in his bin and never see it again." Not, as you are proposing, that He will look at it and then give it back to Her.

Most organizing books recommend handling a piece of mail once, "touch once." Your system would have you touch the mail, then your spouse, then back to you. That's a lot of passing around for one piece of mail.

Why not just have "Ours?" For things that both of you need to look at?

In your shoes, what I'd do is for a week, collect all the mail that comes into the house. Open and deal with anything that needs it, but once that's done, put it will the other mail. Then, at the end of a week, both of you sit down and go through the mail piece by piece, coming to an agreement on what can be tossed immediately, what needs to be dealt with by either one of you and what needs to be looked at by both of you.

You might come up with:

Junk mail--toss immediately
Personal mail--goes straight to whom its addressed to
Credit card bills--"Ours"
Utility bills--"Ours"
Bank statements--Whichever one of you deals with the banking
Mortgage reminder--His
Insurance bills--Hers
Catalogs--toss immediately
Invitations--"Ours"

The things in the "Ours" pile would then be looked at and dealt with once a week on a regular schedule. But this way, both of you would have a good idea of what needs to be looked at by both of you, instead of passing mail around on the off chance that the other one might like to see it.

I'd do this for a month, to get a good feel for all the mail that comes into the house. Then I'd type up a neat list of the "Ours" mail and post it on the "Ours" bin, so I wouldn't forget.

Posted 8 months ago #

Reply

You must log in to post. If you do not already have an account, you can register here.