Thursday, August 14, 2014

How to Get Rid of Junk Mail


If there's one thing that gets me mad it's junk mail. I hate the waste it creates, both in terms of time and materials. Just thinking of how much advertising paper I've had to dispose of over the years really gets my blood boiling. These ads feel like such an invasion to me. For once, I'd like to open my mailbox and only find useful items inside. Normally, I passively put up with my irritation with this situation as I grumble on my way to recycling bin, yet again. But not recently. No I hit a breaking point the other day, when not one but two, 17 lb. Restoration Hardware marketing packages appeared at my door step. That's right folks, 34 lbs. of garbage! I can only imagine how much these shipments cost companies, and how much of that cost is passed down to consumers.

I was incensed, and decided to take action. I signed up for CATALOG CHOICE. It's a free website that allows you to manage junk mail, and send requests to companies to remove you from their marketing lists. For those of you who are like me and wish to avoid mail advertisements, it's a great service. I feel like they've given me a small piece of my life back :-)

11 comments:

  1. 34 pounds! That's ridiculous, how wasteful.

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  2. Woah!!!! That is just madness! We have something in England called the Mailing Preference Service - there is also one for telephone calls and if you still have one faxes as well - and that weeds out a lot of the junk mail, but we still seem to get a fair bit, but nothing like as mad as 34 pounds in one go! The poor postman must have been exhausted from lugging that. I hope that your sign up with the catalogue people works to reduce this. xx

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    1. Ha, I did not even think about the postman......poor guy.

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    1. I agree with you wholeheartedly about junk mail, but did not know about this great resource to rid myself in one fell swoop of the offending items. Over the past two or three years, I've been individually calling each catalog's telephone number and asking to be removed from their mail list. I can't tell you how many times I've done this, but so glad I did, especially since I somehow got on RH's mail list, thankfully that was prior to their astonishing marketing tome being conceived.

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    2. Yes, it can be such a pain to call each company individually. I really appreciated being able to take care of them all with a few clicks.

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  4. I know - this is such a good post - I took loads of photos of those tomes they sent and I still have them - can't bear to send them away!!! Appalling waste of paper as you can see it all online!

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    1. Yes, the fact that you can view it online is what made is extra ridiculous to me.

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