I have been struggling to get going with the In Box Zero http://www.43folders.com/izero/ Concept from 43 folders. This collided with a marathon run of house cleaning last weekend. One of the major problems in my house is the never ending piles of mail that keep piling up all over the main room, dining table and kitchen counter. Mail gets dropped and grows. No one wants to deal with it we just empty the box and let it pile up. I was going nuts because it finally dawned on me. I no longer control the downstairs of my house. It’s being decorated by Big Corporations trying to get me to buy stuff, or do other things. Whether it’s a bill, coupon, bank statement or the never-ending piles of offers and flyers it’s growing in a massive fashion.

My wife wants to go through and cut out coupons for what we use, which is how the piles start. Then there is the pile of things to be files in the folder of financial stuff for that year, and the litany of other things. Its been driving me nuts, but I have not really dealt with it, mainly because I need buy in from the significant other. Not only does it bug me, it starts arguments very very frustrating. After my whole realization that other people where controlling my house I'm putting a stop to it. I have decided to completely steel Merlin’s InBox Zero talk and implement "Mail Box Zero” Time to get some control on this dammed thing.

What I am doing is completely obvious and has been done before. I am just finally doing it at my house. My solution takes up to much space and is not elegant. But this is a training system. If it works and my wife and I can stick to it for a month or so, then we shall go antique shopping or design and build something nice and small that will store what we need. That part is a lesson from Peter Walsh's book It's All To Much http://www.amazon.com/Its-All-Too-Much-Living/dp/0743292642 Peter talks about people buying organization systems for everything and winding up buried under stuff and organization systems that are overloaded by the stuff. Get a system first stick to it, and then find the physical item, or system for organizing it.

So Mailbox Zero, in the front entry way "which we never use everyone comes in through the garage even guests the front door only gets opened to make sure it is locked when we leave for a few days" we have placed a huge Ikea shelf that is on its way out of the house completely. On the shelf is a plastic tub for the in mail. On the floor is paper recycling garbage can. Then there are 3 more plastic bins. Amy, Michael, and to be filed. When someone gets the mail they are to sort the mail. Basically the Do, Delegate Delete principal. I Do all my mail, which is open, and file into the yearly finance folder, I delegate all of Amy’s mail to her box and I delete all the junk mail, which is over 90% of the mail. Anything I am not sure of gets stuffed in the inbox. At some point Amy will grab her mail open and dump, file the few things that need filing and look through the inbox for whatever needs to be grabbed and dump the rest. We are going to control the mail its not going to control us. The golden rule is nothing gets piled up anywhere downstairs. We shall see how this works.

Again its not rocket science and it has been done before. But we have not done it and it has totally controlled us. Look around your main room or family room. Are large corporations decorating it? Do you see piles of advertising flyers, un dealt with mail and so fourth all over the place? We are tolerating it no longer.