Lightening The Load In Our Mailboxes

After several years of hearing my spouse comment on the number of catalogs coming into the house, I did what any data geek would do - I collected all the catalogs that arrived in our mailbox in one year. And, I discovered my spouse had every right to be alarmed. In 2001. we received 396 catalogs - more than one a day, and a stack 3 feet high!!! That's a lot of paper, ink, and enticement to over-consume. About the time we got serious about wanting to reduce the number of catalogs, we heard about CatalogChoice.org, which started in 2007 as one-stop website to ask retailers to stop sending catalogs. I signed up immediately and, slowly, with some persistence, watched the number of catalogs decline. In 2009 I again collected all the catalogs that arrived over 12 months This time we were down to 124, and the stack measured only 11 inches high - a 70% reduction from 2001! Some of my favorite shopping sites had completely stopped sending me their catalogs, such as LL Bean and Lands' End; but one retailer, Coldwater Creek, was annoyingly persistent, sending me 24 in 2009 (down from 49 in 2001, but still). That was the only retailer I had to call directly to ask to be taken off their distribution list - and in 2010, I did not receive catalogs from them. A few lessons learned - CatalogChoice.org works! Go online and sign up with them. Be persistent in reporting companies that continue to send catalogs, and when all else fails, call the company directly. You won't miss the endless entreaties to spend money and buy things you don't need. And you can still shop online, but you're more likely to shop when you need something, not because you just can't live without the thing you never knew existed before you saw it in some catalog. And, if our mailbox could speak, I'm sure it would say it enjoys the lighter load every day.