Organizing the Mail

Alright, be honest now. How many of you, like me, have a mail pit - a place where mail is dropped and forgotten? I get home, my hands are full of groceries, I have to use the bathroom, and everything just sort of gets dumped on the dining room table. Of course I sort through the groceries - after all, food must be refrigerated. But once I've scanned through the mail to see whether there are any packages, paychecks, or birthday cards, I pretty much just leave it there, where it mocks me for the next week or so. Eventually I'll do a quick sort through the pile, recycling junk mail, searching for bills, and shredding credit card applications, but 29 days out of the month the pit is there.

Enter Gina, of Bright and Blithe, and her fabulous mail sorter tutorial. This was a very simple project, and her tutorial even includes the printable labels you see above. Essentially, you are just creating a long pouch, then dividing it into 4 sections with rows of stitches.

Gina used unbleached cotton, which looks the same on both sides, and so her sorter was unlined. I used a cotton print that looks ugly on the back (which would become the insides of the pockets), so I lined mine with a pretty white eyelet cotton that I found at Goodwill.

She also uses a long piece of elastic to turn this into a sort of necklace for a door. I added fabric tabs to mine, so that it can just hang on a wall.

I mounted it on the wall right by the front door, and have notified the husband that there's a new system in place, so here's hoping that I've seen the last of the mail pit!