DIY Mail System

They say that necessity is the mother of invention.  And in this case it was one red bill, that did it.  It wasn’t one of those oh crap how am I going to pay this bill red bill moments, it was a what? we didn’t pay this bill?  Then I handed the bill to my husband and our conversation went a little like this….

You didn’t pay the hydro bill dear.

What do you mean I didn’t pay the bill? You didn’t give me the bill?

Yes, I did!  I put it in your mail pile!!!

What mail pile?

What MAIL PILE? (notice the caps? The conversation loses its friendly tone about here) That giant pile of papers that all have your name on them.  You’ve had mail there for about a month. (now wondering what other red bills are on their way)

A MONTH!! I didn’t know I had a mail pile!…

… A few rounds of unproductive I told you about it/ no you didn’t followed… and then the bill got paid.  YAY!  We get to keep our heat.

I woke up the next morning knowing we had to get a handle on our paper situation.  I remembered something I had pinned a while ago and was inspired by the idea.  The cereal box from the original inspiration post was going to be too big, but lucky for me my Mom seems to buy a box of triskets every time she comes into town and we have a collection of half eaten trisket boxes talking up precious real estate in my pantry.  So I went to town on them, and here’s how I did it.

In case you are wondering, the triangle triskets are the best ones.

1. Empty the boxes.  In my case this required slicing of cheese and eating.
2. Cut out the boxes – pay special attention to the angle of the boxes in the photo.  I messed it up the first time.
3. Reinforce all edges with clear packing tape.
4. Cover the boxes with scrapbook paper – I used a double-sided paper and used the second side on the insides to make it more interesting.  You could also use wrapping paper.
5. Reinforce the top edges of the box with packing tape.
6. Print out some labels and attach.  I labeled ours mail (that’s for my DH), file (anything we need to keep goes there for me to file), and shred (that one is obvious).

Ta – da!  I hung it to our command central board with simple thumb tacks, and that has held up quite a full box of papers.  This project didn’t take long and cost about $3 in scrapbook paper.

My husband who is not a stranger to my “new organization systems” was a big fan of this one.  We’ve been using it for about 6 months and I’m happy to report we haven’t had any more red bills.