Mail Station Bag

This summer I have a few organization projects that I hope to complete.  Actually my list seems like a mile long!  We'll see how it all turns out and how many of them I can actually cross off the list. 

But I did get a start with our 'Mail Station Bag'.  I had heard about having a mail station, which I knew would be a great idea to implement in our home since we have a large island in our kitchen and usually that means a great 'dumping site' for all the junk, mail and papers.  So this seemed like a must to put together to help organize all our incoming papers. 

Thanks to pinterest and the many great tips and ideas that I've found from there I ended up coming up with the idea of a nice looking file 'bag' for our mail station instead of a regular file box.  I really love the final look and can't wait to start using it and feel like I'm just one step closer to being more organized!

I have it set up in our laundry/mud room where we'll eventually have a 'comand center' set up over the chest of drawers.  This will eventually be our family's main entrance into the house once we get our garage doors on and can actually use the garage for what it's meant for, parking our cars! 

Here's my first step in the process of creating the 'comand center' with our Mail Station Bag. 

The file 'bag' I purchased from Target.

And the filing kit that was on clearance from Target.  Score!

For this project I just used the hanging folders.

Then I made my list of 'files' that I wanted for our incoming mail.

And I broke out the trusty label maker, but a pen works just as well.

Then I printed out my labels.

And cut them out.

 I grabbed the tabs and inserts that came in my file kit,

removed the backs from my printed labels

and centered them on the file tab insert.

I put each labeled insert into a file tab

and put them on the 'back' side of each hanging file folder (so when I reach for a specific file and I find it I can open it by just putting my hand in and pulling it open), and spaced them out to my liking.

And there you have it, our new Mail Station Bag! 

We have a mail 'drop' station in the top drawer of the chest because I don't always have time to go through the mail right away.

The mail is set in this tray and then when I have time to go through the mail it can be sorted into the specific file in the mail station and then each week I'll go through the bag and take care of each item.

Where the file bag sits in our laundry/mud room.

And yes, it is very dusty on top of the chest, lol, just keeping it real!  Actually it had a bunch of stuff piled on it and when I took all of it off for the picture I didn't realize just how dusty it was until I looked at these pictures on the computer.  I will have you know that I promptly dusted after I saw it! 

So there you have it!  I hope you like it and that you're encouraged and inspired. 

Do you have any organizing projects that you would like to do or that you're working on?