DIY Mail Sorter

I like things organized.

It doesn't always happen.

The Husband and I have been in our house for 5 years now and I just now (finally) figured out to do with our mail situation.

Prior to this, it has ended up in a pile in one of three places: The kitchen counter (and boy, is The Husband grumpy when he needs to move the mail to get to his coffee in the morning), the dining room table (it's the dumping ground for just about everything and it just looks messy), or the kitchen table (the one we actually sit at to eat and work on the computer and stuff, so that makes me the grumpy bear). Not only is dumping the mail in piles just messy but things get lost. Just a couple of weeks ago I received a phone call from a doctor's office that I haven't been to for over a year. They were letting me know that I had a credit on my account, that they had cut me a check, and that it still wasn't cashed. They were trying to be sure I got it. I might have (as in actually received it). I might not have. Who knows? My mail was such a mess. Luckily, most of the bills are handled through the internet so it's not like we had debt collectors knocking at our doors. But still....

I set out to find a mail organizer that would hang on the wall in the 18" of space I have behind my door. We had a mail sorter prior to this but it was a counter too one and it was trying to share a home on our 10 linear feet of counter top with the knife block, the utensil crock, the canister set, the cable box, the coffee pot, the compost container, the tissue box and this list actually includes the kitchen sink! It just wasn't effective and I hate that my counter tops have stuff over every inch of them that touches the wall. If I had my druthers, I'd take most of the stuff off. But there is good reason for most of it being there (we could be a little better about using the compost container....but after last year's fruit fly incident, we're a little gun shy).

I shopped all over the internet and couldn't find a thing. So I went to the place where dreams come true, www.etsy.com. That place makes me drool every time I go there. People are so darned creative! I love to see what they come up with. But alas, Etsy failed me. There were some 'almosts' but nothing made me shriek: "That's it!"

Etsy did leave me with ideas. With a little from column A, a little from column B, and a little from off the map, I designed the above mail sorter. I had clothes pins, a board, and some paint (guaranteed to match 'cause it's the color inside my china cabinet in the adjacent kitchen!). The Husband was nice enough to visit the Big Orange Box and get me some of those metal pieces. Then, after borrowing the hot glue gun from my parents, I was able to slap it all together.

It's got a 'his' slot, a 'hers' slot and an outgoing mail slot. I've always clipped coupons to my back door with a magnet to remind me to use them (I'm not a very frequent coupon user) but I wanted the coupons on the mail sorter, hence the clothes pins at the bottom. So far I'm liking it, but I haven't gotten much but junk mail for the last several days so I haven't really been able to try it out. But I'm really excited to!