Wednesday: Piles and Piles of Junk Mail

I remember when I first moved into the dorm at University of TX and how cool I thought it was to get mail. Any mail! It was fun to see my name on the label...almost like a contest to see who would walk back to the room with the biggest stack. Now? Not so much. I detest junk mail. I'm not the world's biggest tree hugger, but when I go thru the day's mail and throw away 98% of it? Ugh. Catalogs, coupons, unsolicited advertisements, "please come back to us" pleading letters.... it's too much.

So, yesterday I sat down with a huge pile of collected junk mail with the intention of getting our name OFF of each and every one of their lists. Most of the ads and catalogs were for companies where we had purchased something one time. But that one time gets you on their forever mailing (and emailing) list. Also, if you've ever left a company for another, they will forever bombard you with letters that offer something better. (thank you, GEICO and AT&T)

If you look on the back of some of the junk mail, it will list a phone number to call to be removed from the mailing list. Those were easy enough. But some of them don't have any information, so for those I headed to their company website. Look for the Customer Service or Contact Us links. Most of the time, this is where I either found an email address, an 800-number, or a form to fill out to remove ourselves from the mailing list. Funny, the hardest one to find was for Rack Room Shoes! I bought one pair of shoes there years ago and get frequent flyers from them. There was not a contact number or email address anywhere. I ended up accidentally calling the director of copyright infringement, ha. They had his personal phone number on the website...weird. I just told him, "oh, sorry, wrong number" as I didn't think he'd be the person to ask to remove our address. :D

It took about an hour, but after I was done it felt great to know that in a few months I shouldn't be pulling piles of ads out of the mailbox. The beginning of a new school year always gets me in "clean out" mode, so this mission definitely made me happy! Have you cleared out what you receive in the mail yet? If so, have you noticed a difference?

Thanks for coming to my blog today. :)