Family Mailrooms

Dear Katie & Kelly: I really want to get family organized before school starts. Any recommendations for a good system? I always see those wall charts with wall mail bins on Pinterest and love the way they look. But I’ve tried variations before to no avail. It never ends up looking as good and they’re SO much work to maintain.

Signed: Postal in Painesville

Dear Postal: Things never look as good in reality as they do on Pinterest. The latter is a made up world that exists for about 5 minutes once a week after you’ve straightened everything. We don’t know what you have now in terms of a mailroom but try to formalize or just improve upon what you naturally do.

To make a mailroom function, you need more than just wall slots because those are VERY narrow and don’t hold that much. No personality type enjoys nagging kids to empty cubbies on a weekly basis and that’s what you have to do to keep it looking nice OR you have to declutter weekly. Get everybody bigger bins, find or install shelves that will fit these larger bins (or as in the photograph, hang on wall). Label them and voila that’s technically all you need for a mailroom to function properly without weekly maintenance. Whenever you find something that belongs to someone in the house, you put it in their bin or cubby. You can get fancy and add a wall calendar if this is something you’d naturally do but don’t force it if you’d rather keep dates and times on your computer.

All our best: K & K