Getting Rid of the Junk Mail

After being on vacation for 10 days with my family there were two things I dreaded when I returned home; laundry and mail. I knew the laundry could wait, but as with many previous experiences a large USPS bin would be on my porch overflowing with mail when we returned from vacation. Hopefully, changes I made before we left would alleviate the mass of junk mail that overwhelmed our small pile of regular mail when we arrived home.

Several months before we left, I made a decision to cut down on the amount of junk mail we received. I considered this decision as my little part for saving the earth but more importantly, this decision was about saving my time and being more organized. As with any organization project, it took some time on the front end to save me a lot of time on the back end but it was worth the effort.

During the first week of my new project, I tore off the covers of all of the catalogs I received and wrote the customer number, if I had one, in the bottom corner. I also took all of the junk mail out of their envelopes and kept only the cover letter. The catalog covers and cover letters from the week were kept in a pile on my desk. At the end of the week I sat down at my computer and began to take my name off all of the distribution lists for the catalogs and junk mail. I started by writing a short note requesting to be removed from the mail and email distribution lists, including my address, email address and customer number if available. I copied the note then went to the websites for each piece in my pile, found the "unsubscribe" or "contact us" tab and pasted my note in the appropriate box. When I had finished this process for each piece, I recycled the cover letters and placed the catalog covers in a binder so I could have a record of the catalogs I use. 

This whole process took me about an hour for 34 pieces of junk mail. The next day, I received 34 emails (which took some time to remove) that told me the company had received my email and would discontinue contacting me . Each week meant I had some new sites to contact but the number of these sites rapidly dwindled over the next few months. All in all, the whole process took about 3 hours to contact over 70 sites.

So, after ten days away from home, I went to the post office to pick up my mail. Instead of bringing me a large postal bin, the postal employee brought me only an arm load of mail. And all of the mail was relevant except for seven pieces of junk mail!

The time I spent at the beginning of this project was well worth the time I am saving now.