When having a bunch of penpals I find it important to stay organized. Here are my top five tips to being organized in your "friend/penships".
I keep a really simple log of in- and outgoing mail in a small notebook. The notebook fits in my planner so I carry it with me always. In the top corner I stamp/write whether we are talking sent or recieved and which month. Then I write the names of the sender/reciever as I get/send the letters. I also write little comments such as what was else included other than a letter - and as you can see on the picture - on the sent lsit I mark the price for the letter: In that way I can tally up every month and see how much money I've spent on postage.
2. Remember birthdays / other important dates
What is better than recieving a greeting from your penpal on your special day? Write down birthdays, children's birthdays, anniversaries etc. in your calendar and send your pal a little note to celebrate the day with them!
I try following the 'FIFO' format - First In First Out. That means that I try to reply to letters in the order I recieve them. To make sure I don't have a huge pile building up I always keep unreplied mail in the back of my planner. That also means I have them with me everywhere and can write a reply if I get a little extra time.
4. What have we written about before?
Sometimes I need inspiration or need to check up on a certain detail that I know I've read in a previous letter. Therefore I keep my letters in a folder where every 'pocket' contains letters from one of my penpals. This makes it easy to find the previous letters from that particular person.
5. Indulge in the memories
After having had penpals since I was a young child (around 6 years old) I have recieved hundreds of letters. Obviously there isn't room for them in a folder. I store them in boxes with years written on the label. It is awesome diving into the old letters - rediscovering old pals - reading about what was important in my life when I was younger and just getting inspired by viewing all the papers, fonts, envelopes and so on.
How do you keep organized when penpalling?
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