If you’ve followed the previous post, you now have four stacks of items: reading material, bills to pay, “action items” like invitations and requests for donations, and items to file or display.

Reading material: I like to keep my reading material on the coffee table in our den because that’s the room I relax in. If I’m looking for a magazine, newsletter or newspaper, I know I can find it on the coffee table. To prevent a towering stack of publications, I toss out each publication when the new issue arrives. So the two daily newspapers we receive spend 24 hours in our home. A weekly magazine lasts a week. The only exception is The New Yorker. Though it’s a weekly, I sometimes need a month to finish an issue!

Bills to pay: I’ve had fewer of these arrive in the mail since I began switching to online statements. One day they’ll be obsolete, but until then, I’m stuck with them. I suggest paying them within a week of receipt, perhaps on the same day of each week. You might want to keep them in a bright folder that you empty weekly.

“Action items”: These give me the most trouble because they require input from other people. I can’t RSVP to a birthday party for my son’s friend until I check with him to see if he wants to attend. I need to book a babysitter before making adults-only dinner plans with friends. But grouping these items together in a folder makes it easy for me to coordinate events with my calendar. I’d suggest tackling all invitations every week or every two weeks at a time when you can check in with other family members and/or friends.

File/display: Call me heartless, but 99 percent of the papers and artwork my son brings home from school go on display … in our big blue recycling bin. You just can’t save everything. If you want to remember every finger painting and picture, I’d suggest photographing the art to create an online slide show. You might also hang pictures in a designated spot, like on the fridge, until new ones replace them. Display holiday and birthday cards until the holiday/birthday is over. If any are especially meaningful, save them in an acid-free box.

Items to file are a different story. You need a copy of your homeowner’s insurance and your car insurance. You’ll need to keep a copy of your tax return. It’s fine to make a stack of paperwork headed for your filing cabinet and then file it when you get a few minutes. Tackling even a few pages at a time will yield results. Setting aside an hour here and there for filing makes a huge difference.

The key is to clear these items from your mail-processing zone and get them into a place where you know you’d go to look for them.

I was going to feature the second part of my recent (and insanely popular) “manage your mail” post today, but I’ll wait a few days and instead suggest two helpful resources for organizing inspiration.

First up is a recent Wall Street Journal article on how to create more effective to-do lists.   Various experts, including veteran organizer Julie Morgenstern, weigh in and call for lists that aren’t terrifying in their length and scope. Most effective? Assigning a priority to tasks and scheduling time to tackle them.

The article includes a handwritten to-do list from music legend Johnny Cash. No. 1: Not smoke. No. 2: Kiss June. No. 3: Not kiss anyone else. In the “notes” section at the bottom of the list, he wrote: “Not write notes.” Gotta love that.

If you favor e-lists, try rememberthemilk.com, which helps you track and rank your to-dos.

And the current issue of Real Simple magazine features an article on how to confront what its editors dub “sentimental clutter” — the little objects that are as meaningful to us as the people who used them, made them or gave them to us. Some of the most helpful suggestions in Marjorie Ingalls’ article (which doesn’t seem to be available on line) include saving a favorite postcard from, say, a collection of correspondance and transforming an item (such as a tattered handmade quilt) into something that can be enjoyed in a new form (such as a framed art or a wall hanging).

The bottom line, of course, is that objects may remind us of someone beloved, but they aren’t that person. Ingalls, who writes about her beloved late father’s frog collection, wisely concludes that “the best and most enduring things are the ones you can’t touch.”

One less day of mail might not be a bad thing. Most of the “mail” I retrieve from my mailbox is unwanted circulars and ads. If the contents of your mailbox routinely overwhelm you, let me offer some help.

In this post and next week’s, I’ll be helping you create a system to get your mail under control. There couldn’t be a better time to do it, with glossy holiday catalogs and thick stacks of circulars filling your mailbox. Let’s get started.

First, you’ll need to designate someone in your household to be in charge of the mail. If you’re single, it’s you. (That was easy.) I’d suggest that for couples, the person who’s better organized is better equipped to handle this job. (If neither person wants that job, that’s a whole other story.)

The Mail Handler’s job is to remove the mail from the box daily and do a quick sort by the recycling bin. Quickly flip through the mail and toss anything that’s clearly unwanted (circulars for stores you don’t visit, appeals for charities you don’t support, solicitations, etc.). If you’re like most people, you’ll probably toss at least 50 to 70 percent of what was in the mailbox. Keeping this junk mail out of your house—and off your counters and tables—makes a huge difference in the amount of clutter in your home.

Next, use a letter opener to neatly open all envelopes of the mail that you’re keeping. Remove the contents of each envelope and sort the mail into four categories:

– Reading material: magazines, newsletters, etc.

– Bills to pay

– “Action items”: items that need a response, like invitations, solicitations from charities,

– File/display: insurance paperwork, holiday cards, etc.

So far, so good. Next week, I’ll explain how to set up a simple system to make sure magazines are read, bills are paid and important papers are filed. Stay tuned!

If you’re rolling your eyes in disbelief, I totally understand. Most people quake at the thought of yet another chore on their long holiday to-do list. If you like to send cards but become overwhelmed by the effort required, Sincerely Ink has a great solution: Use their free app to create and send holiday cards from your cell phone.

It’s so easy my 8-year-old has done it: Download Sincerely Ink’s Postagram app. Select a colorful card. Drop in your photo from your camera roll or even Facebook. Add a few lines of personal text. Select the addresses of your recipients from your phone’s address book. Click and send.

Your recipients each get a thick glossy 5-by-7 card with a bright photo and a message from you. Cards are $1.99 each or as little as $1.69 apiece if you order in bulk. International cards are $2.99. Everything comes with a money-back guarantee.

Sincerely Ink’s CEO Matt Brezina says anyone can design and send cards to everyone on their list in 10 minutes. No waiting in line for stamps. No agonizing over boxes of cards. No hunting for return address labels. No writer’s cramp. And no guilt in January when you find the box of unsent holiday cards shoved under a stack of magazines.

Give it a try yourself. Matt has kindly provided a free Sincerely Ink card for the first 20 of my readers who enter the promo code “organizesf” on his site.

Is a card you design and send via less personal than one you hand write? Is it better than no card at all? What do you think?

That limits me to a half-dozen vases. I have three bud vases that were a wedding gift. A short square glass vase is ideal for creating centerpieces that our guests can easily see over. Two taller vases hold long-stemmed flowers like gerbera daisies and stargazer lilies.

Technically, we have a lot more possible vases. I’ve used drinking glasses and creamers to hold arrangements. I’ve used Mason jars and tin cans tied with ribbons a la Martha Stewart.

It’s not uncommon for people to hang onto vases when they receive flowers as a gift. After the flowers die, the only thing left of the kind gesture is a cheap glass vase. Recipients sometimes feel ungrateful if they give it away. But keeping the empty vases isn’t practical either. They take up room and gather dust.

So if you’re not using the vases you own, buy yourself some flowers! Enjoy your vases and brighten your home or desk. If you have vases you never use, wash them out and offer them to your local florist. Most will gratefully accept them and may even offer you a few stems of cut flowers as a thank-you gift. You could also fill the vases with flowers and give them to your daycare provider, favorite aunt or best friend. Instead of gathering dust, they’ll be spreading joy. Not a bad way to get organized.

The right gift for a blended family?

But now that holiday shopping season is looming large, Cuisinart has an alternative. It’s the Blend and Cook Soup Maker. A Bed Bath and Beyond ad for this gadget promises “no pot” and “no stirring” and “no chopping.” As if any of those things are particularly onerous and time-consuming, right? The soup maker appears to be an amalgam of blender and heater. It sells for $199.99.

This gadget, like most single-use kitchen gadgets, is likely to have a long shelf life. By which I mean it will spend a lot of time on your shelf, along with the panini press and espresso machine.

When I help clients to organize their kitchens, we often find dusty one-hit-wonder appliances hidden in the back of cabinets. They were usually wedding gifts that weren’t on the registry or the product of good intentions: “I’ll brew fresh coffee every morning before going to work!”

I generally advise against buying single-use gadgets, with some exceptions. If rice is a staple at your meals, a rice cooker is a wise investment. Ditto for a coffeemaker, provided you regularly drink coffee.

So save yourself $200 this holiday season. Chances are, you already have a large, heat-resistant device that will allow you to make quarts of nourishing soup. It’s called a pot.

Indeed it is. Monday, to be exact. So if you’re the organized and plan-ahead type (or if you want to be), that means it’s a good time to nibble a few bite-sized candy treats and start thinking about holiday events, meals and gifts. Too early? Hardly. Planning your holiday now helps you:

– Beat the crowds at the mall, the delay in deliveries and the rush jobs on seasonal cards.

– Create the type of season that’s meaningful to you.

– Stay on budget through careful spending and preparations.

Check out the FlyLady for some sanity-saving tips and a schedule of bite-sized steps to tackle through the next few weeks. (Thousands of loyal fans swear by her counsel, and I like that she doesn’t take herself too seriously.)

So between now and Nov. 15 is a smart time to:

– Take your holiday photos for cards. Upload to a site like Shutterfly and place your order. Then you can address the envelopes at your leisure and mail them with time to spare.

– Set a holiday budget. List everyone you’re planning to buy a gift for and write a dollar amount by each name. Don’t forget your babysitter, newspaper carrier and other service people. Here’s etiquette expert Emily Post’s advice on who to tip and how much to give.

–Shop wisely. Work with what you have: Raid your “gift drawer” for items that are ideal for the people on your list. Consider buying gift cards. They’re easy to mail, need no gift wrap and likely to please everyone. Teens and college students love iTunes cards, and everyone can find something great on Amazon.

Every year I buy holiday gifts to thank a handful of contacts who were especially helpful or helped my business grow. When I saw holiday tins of Mrs. Field’s cookies on the Costco website, I pounced. For $25, Costco will deliver a tin of 24 cookies to each of recipients, who will undoubtedly be impressed by my thoughtfulness and good taste.

If you want to send a few tins to folks on your holiday list, go right ahead. Just do it before Nov. 13, when the price goes up to $35. Planning ahead really pays.

When they visit the library, each child is allowed to borrow three books. When those are returned, they can select three more. Elana always knows her son and daughter each have three books on loan, so she’s never frantically searching under the sofa cushions for a Harry Potter novel.

I love this idea because it’s so easy to implement. And it will work with any number of books, too.

Reams of paper were sorted first by size and then by color. A Gilead volunteer labeled each stack by color to make restocking a breeze.

Really. Hundreds. All in boxes of eight sticks, all wrapped in plastic. All stored neatly on the highest shelves of the art supply room of Spruce Elementary School in South San Francisco. The funny thing is, the teachers there don’t use chalk. They write on their whiteboards with erasable markers.

So why does the school have what might be the Bay Area’s largest stockpile of obsolete chalk? Because no one at the 600-student school has been responsible for cleaning out storage areas and taking inventory.

That all changed last Friday, when 90 volunteers from Gilead and a crackerjack crew from Rebuilding Together descended on the school for an intensive day of high-octane organizing.

With the blessing of Principal Rebecca Vyduna, the volunteers filled the gym with teaching materials, desks, supplies, craft materials and reams and reams of paper. It was an overwhelming sight! And there were just two organizers on site: the very capable Margaret Lukens of New Leaf + Company, and me.

I had to remind myself that a massive organizing job isn’t all that different from a small one, like organizing a drawer. The same principles apply: Empty the space, group like items together, discard/donate surplus and unwanted items, find the right home for items, make sure your supply fits and label the goods once they’re in place.

I also learned fast that tackling an entire school’s worth of stuff is a piece of cake when you have dozens of volunteers to move, haul and sort. Look here for some “before” and “after” pictures, including some shots of the packed gym.

Over the course of several hours, art supplies were carted to the supply room. Copier paper in every color under the sun was hauled to a room off the library near the office and the copier. The room had two walls of sturdy shelving. I suggested that all the 8.5-by-11 paper be stored on the left side of the room, with the reams of white paper closest to the copier. All other sizes would be stored on the right side and sorted by color. I got the OK from Rebecca and from Cynthia Benedetti, the school’s new secretary. A team of volunteers carefully arranged the paper and then labeled the shelves.

What an incredible result! Reams of paper that had been haphazardly stored in supply closets, random side rooms and even a bathroom were now in one place. And Cynthia can do a quick inventory in a glance. Best of all, teachers and administrators know exactly where to go to find paper in any color or size they need.

Margaret worked wonders in the gym. Surplus chairs, tables and materials were neatly stored out of sight but in easily accessible areas. She also oversaw a slew of volunteers, ably guiding them as they sorted, purged and rearranged.

I wasn’t sure we’d be able to empty the gym in one day, but this indefatigable team blew me away. By the time they departed, new basketball nets were swinging from the hoops, planter boxes had received a fresh coat of paint and lively Dr. Seuss adhesive decorations perked up the library’s white walls. Rebecca and Cynthia couldn’t stop grinning.

Neither could I. Using my organizing skills to eliminate waste and chaos makes me feel like a superhero. And feeling so appreciated and essential while on the job was just icing on the cake.

So what happened to the chalk? Like many useful but unneeded supplies, it was set aside for RAFT (Resource Area for Teaching), a Bay Area site that provides materials to local teachers. I’m sure that someone, somewhere, can find a good use for hundreds of boxes of chalk.

Same for our schedules. A free hour rarely signals us to relax with a book we’ve been eager to read. Instead, it suggests we have too much time on our hands. So we’d better use that time productively by taking tennis lessons, mowing the lawn or, of course, checking email for the zillionth time.

But empty spaces shouldn’t always be filled. Author Rick Hansen makes this point beautifully in this column. A cup’s value, he notes, is “the space, the emptiness, it holds.” And he suggests that we all “be more mindful of the element of space, openness, possibility, reserve capacity, and emptiness in your life.

“This includes room in a drawer, the volume of air in a kitchen, the vacuum in a lightbulb, open mindedness in a friend, or minimal traffic on a highway. Consciously appreciate the beneficial somethings that are the gifts of various nothings.”

What lovely advice for anyone trying to organize or simplify or just get through a crazy-busy day in bustling America. Hanson suggests we try to “explore the practice of NOT adding as a form of subtracting.”

So resist the urge to fill up your closet, your garage, your kids’ after-school hours and your shopping cart. Leave room in your home and schedule for unexpected gifts and surprises. Then when they come to you, you’ll know exactly where to put them.