Mail

I need to work on opening my mail in a timely fashion. Usually mail comes and I see bill, bill, pre-approved credit card, bank statement, bill, magazine or coupon. I pay the majority of my bills online, so these aren't important. I am OCD with my checking account and usually have an idea within a couple dollars in my head at all times, so the bank statement can be set aside because I can compare mental account to online account. Pretty close to the same thing with pay check stubs thanks to direct deposit and online time sheets. Coupons and magazines... sales and deals crowd my email inbox, so I will occasionally search through those for any additional coupons savings if I'm planning on shopping. Rolling Stone and Taste of Home and Cooking Club magazines are immediately snatched out and all thoughts about the remaining pile are forgotten.

This is only if I got the mail and am going through it myself. If my mom gets my mail, she immediately puts the lot of it on my stack of things I've already "glanced" at (see above). Now when this pile gets too high, I seriously consider going through it and sorting it to the filing cabinet. "Too high" means taller than the napkin holder next to it; for anyone wondering that's around 5 inches. However, sometimes it never reaches this magical height. It just disappears. My mom will clear it away in a drawer. Since the pile is not high enough to be worrisome, it doesn't need to be opened and so it sits.

Then a year passes and the drawer is full and the pile reaches it's magical height. So I went through the pile and drawer today. The contents are distributed across the living room tonight and I found two checks and a replacement credit card (1st cc ever is the only reason I keep this card and use it once a year) and replacement store credit card (closed the closest store, so...). Also, realized that I might have missed my last payment to the school a couple months ago. Yeah, oops.

Conclusion: I need to open my mail in a more timely manner.