Nothing drives my husband crazier than how recycling seems to spread all over the house. This usually occurs because we do not have a set system for opening the mail, dealing with junk mail or recycling newspapers.

One day we might do this in the living room, which leaves the coffee table in that room drowning in paper. The next day, the mail opening and paper reading might occur in the dining room, where, inevitably, a pile of paper ends up on the table or one of the dining room chairs. Eventually we get sick of the paper clutter and try to gather it up for recycling. Usually, we’ll collect this in paper bags–either the brown paper kind from the supermarket or one from our long-ago shopping-bag stash–and pile them in a corner between the kitchen and the dining room. The rest of our recycling? Well, we’ve set up a large garbage pail outside the kitchen window so that we can toss cans, bottles, plastic and other recyclables out the window–literally–into the can.

This outside-the-window can was our attempt to minimize the recycling mess in our house. Unfortunately, I’m not sure that it’s working. Thankfully, during these past few days at my mother’s house, where I’ve been staying while she recovers from a medical emergency, I think I’ve picked up some tips for keeping our recycling in a more orderly fashion.

First, my mother enjoys single-stream recycling, which means everything–paper, plastic, cans, etc.–gets put in together in one bin. She has a bin in her kitchen, about the size of a two-drawer filing cabinet, in which she tosses everything that will be recycled curbside. Luckily, we too are enjoying single-stream recycling with our new/old trash hauler. That means that it’s no longer necessary for us to have an outside-the-window can for the “hard” recyclables and the paper bags inside for the paper. I’m thinking that we should also invest in a similar sized bin for that corner between the dining room and kitchen so that, finally, we have one concentrated place to put our recyclables.

Next, my mother lives in a state with a bottle bill. That means that she does not toss soda cans or bottles in with her curbside recycling, because she can get money back for them. Lucky stiff. Note to self: write to my state senator and representatives and find out what’s going on (if anything) with a bottle bill in my state. My point with this, though, is that she keeps all of her collected, returnable bottles out of sight so as not to clutter her kitchen. All of it is kept in her basement, which might be another good, out-of-the-way place for us to keep our recycling. Only problem? We would be taking everything downstairs, only to bring it back upstairs to take it out on trash day. Perhaps the better option is for us to create a recycling receptacle on our back step, where we have a covered porch–ensuring that our recycling won’t get wet but, at the same time, ensuring that my husband won’t have to look at a collection of recyclables during the week.

Finally, my mother recycles plastic bagging at the supermarket like I do. However, unlike my system, of shoving all of those plastic bags in a kitchen drawer to get them out of the way (I use some of them to clean up after the dog), my mom keeps a plastic bag under her sink, into which she puts all of the other plastic bagging she wants to take to the supermarket to recycle. That’s a simple, obvious yet genius way of keeping the bags all in one place and ready to grab when it’s time to go to the store. I think I’m going to have to steal that idea, too.

What about you guys? How do you keep your recycling in order and prevent it from cluttering up your house?