Mail in the 21st Century – how mail organises people

Pauline Hutchinson: Doctor’s appointment for my daughter
Maureen Howes: Child tax credit
Matt Herbert: Holiday tickets
Rassi Miller: Sky magazine
Jo Papa: Travel brochures
Matt Herbert: Credit card statement
Natasha Buttivant: The theatre that we use quite a lot
Heather Beckwith: Tesco vouchers
Matt Herbert: My council tax bill
Joshua Sheridan: A letter from the bank
Tony Odible: It’s all relevant information that I need really.
Title: How mail organises
Rassi Miller: The mail that I’d open first would be the most important ones and then I'd figure out what I have to pay for.
Maureen Howes: If it’s something I need to pay, because they always want money for something, and they’re kind of things that I tend to stick in the basket. And then you get a letter home that you didn’t send the cheque in, so I worry that I’ll forget to pay them.
Heather Beckwith: If I’m rushing around and I haven’t got time, again it’s opened but unfolded so I can see it, and I’ll put it on the sideboard next to the phone because I know that I have to do something with it.
Rosemary Starling: I’ve got to phone them to see if I can do it in instalments, so that will go up there because I’ve got to remember that’s up. When I come in, I will sort of glance up there and that will remind me, oh I must phone them.
Jo Papa: Anything that I find that we need to be reminded of, i.e. sort of surprise birthday parties, golf invitation days etc, etc or appointments get pinned onto the board, which is in the kitchen,
Maureen Howes: Normally if it’s something from the school, from my two younger daughters, we get stuff from school, I might put it on the fridge, stick it with a magnet.
Jo Papa: It’s untidy, and in fact we leave it untidy because it reminds us, we look at it and think, that’s untidy but basically it keeps us looking at it.
Maureen Howes: I don’t like sticking bills on there because people are always in and out so they see how much you owe on your credit card if you put it on the fridge!
Heather Beckwith: We’ve got a pinboard in our kitchen and I’ll put it there to sort of remind me because I tend to look at it quite a bit, it’s got the calendar on it as well.
Paul O’Sullivan: There’s a parking ticket issue which I picked up a few weeks ago and I just want to make sure there’s follow-through on that
Pauline Hutchinson: That will get stuck up on my kitchen, over my calendar, just to make sure that we know.
Gemma Price: That to me is important, so what I would do with this normally is I would take the information down into my diary or what have you and file this away to keep for obvious reasons.
Chris Czarny: A lot of people like to keep for reference, you know, for like backdating things, things like that do need to be in a physical form.
Paul O’Sullivan: I do have what I call a 'today file' interestingly, and which is a bit of a misnomer because it could get dealt with any time but it’s stuff I know that’s live.
Jim Wilson: If it’s something particularly interesting it will stay in the kitchen and it’ll be on the side to remind myself.
 Natasha Buttivant: The children can look through there and see if there is anything they're interested in going to see.
Janet Hagan: It keeps the family together. On a weekend we’ll sit and chat about it. If something comes through we'll perhaps make a decision to go as a family, or just with my daughter, or Kieran and his dad, or me to a sporting event with Kieran because we both like cricket. So that’s our little time frame, little time warp where you have five minutes chill out when the post arrives...