Challenge Day Eight: Get Organized

As I wrote the title of this post I broke out into a little bit of and unladylike sweat. You might have broken out in a sweat reading it if you’re like me… miserably disorganized and lost in a whirlwind of swirling papers mixed with broken pens and crumpled candy wrappers. Hopefully you’re better than that and if you are I certainly admire you for it. (That is not to say I will not mock you now and again, but it’s really all in good fun and I don’t mean anything by it.)

I must say, though, there’s one thing I organize well — my letter writing stuff. I have a great setup for my writing stuff and also for letters I have received. Today’s challenge does not involve writing letters, but creating the best possible environment for letter writing. Doing that will make it easy for you to dash off notes on the fly, elegantly and easily.

All you need for this challenge is a small plastic tub or a storage box. It can be a shoe box, but I prefer one that will at least have an interior space of about 9×12. You can go with something smaller if you don’t use 8.5×11 paper for your writing. It’s nice to get something that will fit on your bookshelf for easy access. If it’s pretty all the better!

In the box you need to assemble the following things:

• 1-2 notepads
• handful of quarter-sized envelopes (4.25×5.5) and a handful of #10 envies
• a selection of blank or any-occasion cards with envelopes
• a selection of specific occasion cards if you like to use those
• 2-3 of your favorite pens
• an envelope containing a sheet of first class stamps and a sheet of postcard stamps
• a handful of attractive postcards
• address book or a sheet with a list of addresses
• optional: stickers, rubber stamps or other little goodies for decorating envelopes

This is everything you’ll need to write a letter at any given moment. The trick is to keep the box in a place that is easy to pull out and use. The other important thing is to keep the box stocked up! If you run out of anything in there, the system breaks down. You don’t want to have to go find something in the middle of writing. It breaks the flow.

The second thing I like to do is a mini-organizer that you can use as your traveling correspondence kit. What I personally use is a small canvas zippered notepad case that’s about 6×9. Inside it has a yellow notepad and a pen holder. There are pockets on the inside and outside. Be sure whatever you get has a zipper or very secure enclosure so nothing can fall out. It needs enough pockets for stamps, stickers, 2-3 quarter-sized envelopes, and 2-3 postcards. In this I also have a printed list of a dozen or so people I like to send postcards to when I’m traveling. I don’t like taking my address book with me on trips in case I lose it. The whole thing is about the size of a large-format paperback book, but thinner and fits great in a backpack or carry-on.

Once you get used to having both of these things, you’ll love it.

I like hearing how people organize the letters they want to keep because if you get lots of mail it quickly becomes a chronic problem. Many people use storage boxes and stack their letters in those which is fine. It keeps the dust out and they stack nicely. I personally don’t like that system because I like to periodically go through and look at letters I have received. (Like a pirate running her greedy fingers through that trunk of gold doubloons!) With the first system mentioned you have to open all the envelopes and unfold the letters to find what you’re looking for. To me it’s just an annoyance.

The letters I keep go into plastic sleeves (archival quality). I unfold them flat and staple the envelope to the back of the letter so that when I look at the sleeve the letter is face-up on the top and when you turn the sleeve over you see the FRONT of the envelope with the address, stamp and postmark showing. The great thing about this system is you can scan the first page of the letter without having to do anything. And if your correspondent didn’t put the date on the letter you can flip over to the back and see the date on the postmark.

I put all these in binders and keep them on the bookshelf. You can organized the binders in whatever way is comfortable for you. I keep Dad in his own binder and Mom in her own. Miscellaneous family members go in one binder together. Friends go in another binder and when those build up to multiple volumes they just end up being chronologically organized. If one friend writes enough she’ll eventually break out to her own binder and I’ll pull all her letters out of the group binder and keep them in chrono order in her new “home”.

You know, when I write it all out like this it sort of makes me sound a little bit compulsive, but it’s actually not as fussy as it sounds. If only you knew how unfussy I am. In fact, any friends of mine who might be reading this are probably laughing their heads off right about now. Like I said, this is the ONLY thing about me that is organized.

How do you organize your letter writing environment? I’m always looking for great new ideas. I hope you will share them with me!

Tags: challenge, letter, letter writing, Organization, simplify your life