Quit Bringing in the Trash!

Oh this is a good one. All clutter begins at the front door and this is true for everyone, regardless of type. But what you do with it and how you deal with it is very different amongst the types. Better Homes and Gardens’ January edition tells us to “Quit taking brochures, menus, and flyers just because somebody hands you one. Don’t let that extra paper cross your home’s threshold — toss it right into your recycling bin.” And boy are they right. It’s garbage coming in, not out.

But forget about handouts on the street or grocery store, what about all those catalogs and direct mailings that litter our mailbox? There’s an easy way to stop these at the source, and yes even you types who love to dream with your catalogs, why not take a few moments, ONCE, and just ask for the ones you really like? These sites make it super easy. Stop the Junk Mail or Precycle (formerly Green Dimes)

Also, if you’re moving? Don’t rely on the post office for a change of address. They will sell your new address to whoever is bidding. Yes, we couldn’t believe the US Postal Service was this on the ball, but they are. Last time Kelly moved, she didn’t let the USPS know and it cut her mail garbage down almost completely.

Now Better Homes and Gardens also recommends creating an indoor mailbox in a central location, which is a great idea, but then they tell you to set a time to go through the box once every week. Whaat? This will work for scheduled, list making types like Classics, Organic Structures and Smart Structures, but while my Organic Freedom self has a central indoor mailbox, it is in actuality five attractive file folders in an old fashioned toast point holder, and if I don’t’ go through my mail and sort it into the appropriate files the minute I see it (easy for adaptive types like myself, Smart Freedoms, and Funs) then it could stay there for months until it becomes an overwhelming, terrible task.

Now us adaptive types, who are time challenged, might also do well to attend to the mail when we feel like it, but scheduling will never work and we’ll feel like failures in due time. And I have a feeling that scheduling mail time would only really work for Classics. You guys most likely already know exactly what you do with mail and are perplexed why we are discussing this in the first place!