4. Intercept the post before it reaches a flat surface
Paper is the category that creeps furthest into the house, because unlike a coat it has no obvious home and every decision about it feels like work.
Put a small bin or paper recycling box inside the front door. Roughly two-thirds of what comes through a letterbox is unsolicited and can be recycled without being opened, and the only reason it is not is that the bin is in the kitchen. With a box at the door, the sorting happens standing up in ten seconds.
Then one shallow tray for anything that needs action. One tray, not a rack of three — multi-slot organisers encourage filing rather than dealing, and a letter filed into “to do later” is a letter you will find in March. The tray should be small enough that it physically cannot hold more than about a week of paper, so its capacity does the nagging for you.
Set a weekly moment to empty it. Sunday evening, bin night, whichever anchor already exists in the week. Five minutes is usually enough because you have already binned the junk.
Anything that must be kept — statements, certificates, warranties — should leave the entryway entirely and go into wherever the household files things. The entryway is a triage point, never a storage location, and the moment it starts holding paper for its own sake the whole system silts up.
Add a shredder nearby if anyone worries about documents, because a shredder in another room means envelopes pile up waiting for a trip that never happens.