Taming the snail mail monster

This is just about one week's junk mail

We've noticed a steady decline in "real" mail and a steep increase in junk mail over the past few years. Our real mail has declined because we do most of our communication online, and our junk increases because our name is being sold to many organizations and businesses.

I had already put our names on the lists to eliminate catalogs long ago, so we didn't get many of those -- just solicitations or catalogs that don't access that list I guess.

So until this summer, I resigned myself to opening them all to retrieve the fairly large amount of paper that we could use for scrap paper, then putting the rest into the recycling bin. Thank goodness that our county recycles this junk! (Note: I've read on Living Lighter that each year more than 100 million trees are turned into the 5.8 million tons of mail that end up as 450,000 garbage trucks worth of waste!)

Over the past few months, though, I've taken action. This was partly because there was so much in the news about the Post Office's problems and partly because I had become pretty resentful of the time it takes to deal with this junk. Even if I didn't feel compelled to rescue what paper I could out of all of that mess, it takes time to sort out the real mail from the junk.

I've collected all the junk mail we get, then once or twice a week I've been either emailing or making phone calls asking to be taken off the lists. Initially I had thought that email would be easier, but in some cases, it was just too hard to find the appropriate email on the website.

I've kept a list of dates I contacted each organization

I keep a little notebook listing the organizations I've contacted and the date I contacted them. Since some organizations contact me frequently, and since it takes a few months for the mailings to stop,  it was hard to remember if I had already contacted them--hence the list. Each line in the list (in the photo) is one organization, and I have six pages so far! And each day I still get new junk...
 
It was interesting to find that some of these organizations have being taken off their list as a separate item on their phone tree! I guess I'm not the only one doing this.

I should note that there were organizations that I think may be charities that are excuses for a big CEO salary, but there were some organizations I respect and will continue my membership in. For these, it's all the more reason I don't want them to waste money sending stuff I have never responded to.

Another thing we did was to discontinue magazines that come with membership. For example, even though Audubon magazine is beautiful, I just don't have time to read it and I'd rather have them spend their money on bird conservation, not sending me a magazine that will just get recycled.

All in all, it's been somewhat time-consuming, but I'm really looking forward to the time in a few months (it takes a few months for the mailings to cease they tell me) when we'll just have mostly real mail in our mailbox--and for the amount of real mail we receive, once a week delivery would probably be adequate...