Tips for climbing envelope mountain - how to open the mail when you've been procrastinating
So many people procrastinate about opening their post. Unfortunately, unlike email, where the passive-aggressive little “unread” number just ticks higher, actual mail takes up space in your home, so eventually you have to deal with it one way or another. (It’s probably a good idea to do something about those emails too, but that’s a problem for another day.)
There are many reasons why unopened envelopes build up. Some people are in debt and are avoiding scary overdue payment letters. Some people are neurodivergent and letter-opening is a chore they tend to avoid. Some people are just busy and keep putting it off until they realise there are several week’s unopened mail and possible something important is lost inside that may need a response.
Now, I have to confess, I have many unhelpful financial habits, but I do generally stay on top of my post and my emails. That said, I’ve helped others with this and I’ve completed tasks I didn’t want to do enough times to have some useful tips.
If you want to tackle your envelope mountain, but the thought feels very overwhelming, here is my gentle guide to getting it done.
Paper can’t bite!
This sounds funny, but our bodies respond to anything we perceive as an emotional threat as if it were a physical threat. Adrenaline and cortisol flooding your system to help you fight or run away will not help you make wise, long term choices about your admin and organisation.
Remind yourself you are not about to fight a crocodile. You are simply dealing with some bits of paper.
What’s more, many people have a tendency to catastrophise about the unknown. There’s a reason that horror movies often don’t show us the monster. What we imagine is so often worse than reality. Once you know what is real, you can deal with it. Until you know, you can’t.
The mountain is actually a molehill.
90% of your post is unnecessary guff and when you open it you’ll find it can go straight in the recycling. It’s either advertising, or duplicates or it’s out of date. There is so much less here to deal with than you expect.
Get a buddy
Do you know anyone else who might have tedious life admin to do? Could you buddy up and do it at the same time? It doesn’t have to be in-person. As long as you’re working at the same time and checking in periodically via a video call or text messages, that will give you a boost. The key is to know that someone else is also tackling their crap at the same time you’re tackling yours. Misery love company and it can help you stay focused and push through when you know someone else is doing the same.
Regulate your nervous system and get in a positive frame of mind
Stretch your shoulders out, jump around a bit, walk around the block, take a few deep breaths and release them slowly. Make a hot drink. Put on some inspiring music. Speak kindly to yourself. You’re not a stupid, lazy, idiot who’s bad at being an adult and can’t even be trusted to open their post. You are an imperfect human like all the other imperfect humans. What’s past is past and what matters are the choices you make now. You are going to open this post because doing so will make your life better and you deserve a better life. It’s time to show yourself love and care by removing this source of stress from your home.
You can open mail and not read it.
Try that! Open your mail and sort it by sender without actually reading the contents.
Take breaks if you need to
Stand up and stretch at intervals. Get a breath of fresh air. It’s ok not to just blast through in a single sitting. (Of course, if you get into a flow or you’re neurodivergent and become hyperfocused, go with it!)
You may want to try the Pomodoro Technique of using a timer to measure out bursts of intense activity (typically 20-25min) with short breaks (3-5min) in between.
You can organise and still not read
Once your post is sorted by sender, sort each sender pile into date order. You still ddont’ have to read the contents.
Start an action list
As you sort the mail you’re going to come across items that need responses or other actions on your part, so it’s a good idea to be ready to make a list of actions as you sort. Grab your favourite notetaking tool whether that’s digital notes, voice notes or old fashioned pen and paper and be ready to capture whatever comes out when you actually begin to read what you’ve been sent.
Have your containers for sorted mail ready
Have a container for the mail you don’t need to keep ready to hand. You may have a shredder, in which case have that nearby and emptied ready to go. That said, it’s common to have too much to put through before a domestic shredder will become filled up and overheated. It’s wise to have a sack or two to contain the mail you intend to shred/recycle/throw out.
You should also have a couple of files for the mail you need to keep. One for mail you want to keep but may have no immediate actions like statements or updated legal terms, another for letters that require action. If you don’t have files, large envelopes will do. Even a couple of bulldog clips to keep like items together is better than just plopping them in a pile.
Begin where it’s easiest
Which letters do you feel most neutral about reading? If there are any letters that you think you will enjoy reading, try saving those for last, as a reward. However if there is a sender about which you feel entirely neutral, this are a good place to start.
As you read the most recent letter from this sender, ask yourself if you need to take any action. Do you have to keep the letter? Is it a statement of account, a legal notification or similar? Or is it just marketing or other useless information? If you don’t have to keep it, shred it and/or recycle it straight away. If there’s an action, add the action to the list and file the letter in the action file. If you just need to keep it, pop it in the “to keep” file, ready to be filed properly later.
If there are duplicate letters for the same action, just keep the most recent and discard the rest.
Celebrate the small wins
Celebrate every time you finish a sender pile. Dab. Do a goofy dance. Strut around like Freddie Mercury singing “We will rock you”. Play air guitar. Give yourself a high five. Whatever will make this process feel just a little lighter and give you a moment to recognise all the work you’ve done, do it!
Go at your own pace
If you’d rather blast through everything in one sitting and be done with it all, go for it. If you’d rather break it into blocks and do some today and some another time, that’s good too. If you choose the latter, I’d suggest actually picking a time and putting it in your calendar as half-completed jobs have a tendency to linger if you don’t set a time for them.
Either way, remember to be kind to yourself as you go. You’re doing this because having a pile of unopened post is stressful and you deserve a life free of stress. You deserve to have the information you need to deal with any issues that arise and not be ambushed by them. That is what you are achieving by opening your post. Well done. I’m proud of you.
If you’d like me to help you get rid of your envelope mountain, pop a time into my calendar and we can work out a plan of action to get those papers sorted and gone.
Self-love, self-care, self-abandonment (and money)
People in failing relationships often become uncaring or neglectful. "If you can't be bothered," they say to themselves "Nor can I!" One of the biggest revelation for me in therapy was my failing relationship with myself. I was treating myself like I wanted to break up!
I took my good points for granted instead of celebrating them. I didn't think creatively about what could bring me joy. I was neglectful of my every day needs: my home was a mess; I didn't take good care of my health - my sleep hygiene was poor, I drank too much and I barely exercised.
As my therapist put it I had "abandoned myself". It did not feel good. And, of course, the worst bit of treating yourself like you want to break up is that you can't do so and live. You only become more and more miserable and trapped with time.
Thankfully there was an answer. A previously uncaring and neglectful partner who becomes considerate and fun can re-ignite the spark and make you fall in love again.
Similarly a person who has abandoned themselves who begins to show themselves care and love falls back in love with themselves.
In essence, even though each of us is only one person, we act as if there is an element of reciprocity in how we treat ourselves.
If we aren't loving and caring to ourselves we sulk and refuse ourselves future love and care. We act as if there is someone else in the equation who should do better, but it's just us!
Because we are angry and disgusted with ourselves for not looking after our wellbeing, we refuse to do the things that would improve our wellbeing as a kind of self-punishment.
The fix is to see the cycle for what it is and realise no one else can break it. we have to start showing ourselves the love and care we crave.
We have to treat ourselves as worthy of love and care in order to believe it, it doesn't work the other way around because the physical evidence is against us.
This is true both in the sensible ways (washing the dishes, getting fresh air, and going to bed instead of doomscrolling) and in the fun ways (taking a day trip, dancing like no one is watching, buying a small indulgence - like fresh flowers or fancy socks).
We have to make a commitment to ourselves. After all we're in this relationship for life. If we can't be happy in it, we can't be happy.
I have said before that we use money to treat ourselves the way we believe we deserve to be treated.
That means that if we don't believe we deserve comfort and peace of mind, we will mis-manage our money so there's never enough and we are constantly stressed.
The internal dialogue that says "If you can't be bothered, nor can I!" can get very strong around money, even for people who take excellent care of themselves in other ways.
That's why I'm inviting you to make 2023 the year you make a real commitment to yourself.
This is the year to show yourself some genuine consideration and prove to yourself that you are deserving of your own love.
The changes I've made since therapy weren't easy. I've had times of backsliding. The voice of self-resentment is loud at the beginning. One day of not wiping the cooker down properly or taking the lift instead of the stairs and it was easy to feel both that I had failed and that I was unworthy of a clean home and a healthy body. And if I wasn't worthy of it, why make the effort?
Because of this I know that structures and support to get started and stay motivated are vital, especially in the early stages. My therapist would ask about my self-care every week.
So, to help you not only get started but stay committed to yourself and to using money to treat yourself like you are worthy of love and care, I have developed a new programme that starts at the end of this month (January 2023). I'm very excited to share it with you.
My Year of Action is a small group coaching programme that I have been planning and testing for literally years. Now it's ready to launch starting this January 31st. I'm very excited!
(For those of you who have completed My Money Canvas, the programme maps onto the areas on the Canvas, so you can prioritise the areas you identified as needing the most attention. For those who haven’t sign up to my newsletter to get the free download, there’s a form on my home page.)
Because it's the first time I'm running My Year of Action, I'm offering it at a heavily discounted rate, so it's works out at just £39 a month!
Given that one of my testers cut her costs by £600 a year in the first month, I reckon this is a great deal. You can show yourself a lot of love with £600.
To find out more and book your place, just click the button.
I can't wait to see you there!
What happens if you strip off your mental wallpaper?
We’re having the house re-wired and re-plastered. We’ve stripped the wallpaper, lifted the carpets and found all the hidden stuff we couldn’t see when we bought the place. It was nerve-wracking, but also brilliant. Now we know what we’re dealing with. Guess what? This is a facing the truth about yourself metaphor.
We could have stayed living in the house as it was when we moved in. We could be living with ugly, textured 1980s wallpaper and a drab, grey fitted carpet throughout. We could have decided that we didn’t want to know if there were issues with the plaster or woodworm in the floorboards. We could have made do with the old radiators, even if they were full of gunk and didn’t get hot all the way down. We could have decided that whatever the strange plasterboard alcove was hiding could stay there.
We didn’t.
We sucked it up, called in the professionals, and pulled away the superficial to find what was really underneath.
What was really underneath?
A building site. The wooden floor is dusty. The walls are painted in an art deco style with a slightly eccentric mix of yellow ochre and khaki green with chestnut brown accents. There are wires hanging from uncovered electric sockets. A capped water pipe dangles from one wall. There are dust sheets bundled up. A broom and a ladder propped against a wall. The electric pendant light dangles from a hole in the ceiling.
Well, there was lots of gunk in the central heating system but new radiators and a flush through sorted that out. There was a really weird paint job that we suspect might date back to the 1930s when the house was built. There was some places where the plaster is pulling off the walls and will need to be cut away and replaced completely. There was a set of electrics so dodgy we are now re-wiring altogether. There were floorboards in surprisingly good condition (hooray!) just waiting for sanding and polishing. There was an interesting arch that’s part of the chimney system.
If you go through struggles that you are powerless to prevent, (difficulties in childhood, natural disasters, serious illness, adult trauma and abuse etc) you will develop the mental equivalent of ugly wallpaper, cheap carpet and strange pointless alcoves as a way to feel or appear normal until you feel safe enough to repair the effects of your struggles.
The trouble is, your brain puts up the wallpaper without asking you first. It carpets the floor before you have a chance to object to the colour. It sticks an alcove over things you actually quite like, so you forget they were ever there. In fact, you’re so busy surviving, you don’t even notice that your mental home has changed. By the time you are in a position to do anything about it all, ugly wallpaper, drab carpet and strange alcove seem normal. This is just how you are.
Many of the struggles I wrote about above often involve a financial element. That can lead to the sense of powerlessness and pain connected to the event transferring to your feelings about money. There are also times when money is right at the heart of a painful experience, like losing your job or finding your partner has secret debts.
If you have stopped looking at your finances or told yourself you’re “bad with money” or “not a money person” that’s ugly wallpaper.
Here’s the thing. Until you look underneath, you won’t know where the plaster is pulling away from the wall, so you won’t know what needs repair. You’ll be living in the cold needlessly because you would rather avoid dealing with it than get warm.
More than that, you also won’t know about that arch that could become a cool feature if you let it out. You won’t be able to polish up and enjoy your good solid floorboards.
Personal finance experts often tell you to face facts so you can fix where you’re failing. I’m telling you to face facts so you can discover and celebrate where you’re already better than you knew.
Yes, and fix the bits that need fixing, because you deserve better than cracking plaster and cold radiators.
Are you ready to lift the grey carpet over your money mind?
Try My Money Canvas. It’s a quick, free, simple tool to help you uncover your financial strengths and weaknesses with no maths and no paperwork required.