Easy Eco-tip Tuesday: Unjunk Your Mail Box

We purchased a home a little over a year ago. And with that home I inherited yet another batch of junk mail. Some days the mail box was jammed so full with the grocery circular as well as magazines and catalogs from the former resident that I could barely get my mail out. Luckily for me, I cleverly documented the unjunking process for myself on this blog about two years ago.

If your junk mail is clogging up your mail box and hogging your recycling bin, follow these four simple and free steps to an unjunked mail box. You'll be happy you did!

How to Unjunk Your Mail Box

Step 1: Save Your Junk

Step 2: Opt Out of Credit Card Offers

Step 3: Cancel Your Weekly Shopping Flyer

Step 4: Cancel Catalogs

Series Reprise and Final Tips

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Are you interested in Going Green Gradually? Sign up for my free email subscription to get each of my posts delivered to your inbox (I usually post two or three times a week). You can also follow me on Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, or with your favorite RSS Reader. I hope to see you again soon!

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Goodbye, Junk Mail: Series Reprise and Final Tips

The complete Goodbye, Junk Mail Series:
Step 1: Save Your Junk

Step 2: Opt Out of Credit Card Offers

Step 3: Cancel Your Weekly Shopping Flyer

Step 4: Cancel Catalogs

Series Reprise and Final Tips

It may be a few more weeks before you see dramatic decreases in your junk mail.  I'm still getting the grocery circular.  Everything left you can do to decrease your amount of unsolicited mail is more arduous. You basically have to contact individual organizations (charities, your alma mater) and ask them to stop sending you stuff.

Here is a sample letter:
Please remove my name and address from your mailing list.  I want to reduce the amount of unsolicited mail I receive.  (Be sure to include all variations of your name.)
Name(s)
Full mailing address
Signature and date

Here are some parting words of advice:

• Any time you give out your address, ask that it not be shared (if you can).  Simply state: "Do not sell or share my name/information." Also ask that you not be sent any of their material by snail mail.  Ask them to send you information and solicitations by email instead.
• Two things that don't work: refusing junk mail (by writing "refusal" or "return to sender" on the envelope) since 3rd class mail is not forwarded;  sending junk mail back postage due.  Both of these simply result in the mail carrier tossing your junk mail for you.
• Contact your service providers such as insurance, bank, and wireless provider, and ask them not to send you promotional material.
• Go to DMAChoice.org, register, and opt out of everything (catalogs, magazines, other mail).  Note that I did not find this site useful for opting out of individual catalogs and things (not one of the catalogs I wanted to stop receiving is in their catalog list).  Catalogchoice.org has a much more extensive list.  But hopefully registering with DMAChoice.org will prevent you from randomly getting added to someone's mailing list.
• In a month or so (when most of cancellations should have kicked in), begin saving the mailing label from your junk mail again, keep it somewhere visible on your desk, and take a little time once a month or so to cancel those mailings.

Are you interested in Going Green Gradually? Sign up for my free email subscription to get each of my posts delivered to your inbox (I usually post two or three times a week). You can also follow me on Facebook, Twitter, or with your favorite RSS Reader. I hope to see you again soon!

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How to Cancel Catalogs (Goodbye, Junk Mail - Step 4)

If you missed Step 1: Save Your Junk, click HERE.

If you missed Step 2: Opt Out of Credit Card Offers, click HERE.

If you missed Step 3: Cancel Your Weekly Shopping Flyer, click HERE.

If you have been participating in my Goodbye, Junk Mail Series, you have been saving your junk mail, canceled credit card offers and canceled your weekly grocery circular.  Now it's time to cancel your catalogs.  Sometimes you get a catalog because you once ordered something from a company.  Sometimes you get a catalog because you ordered from a company or organization that sold your name to another company.  Sometimes you have no idea why you are receiving a catalog.  If you are receiving unwanted catalogs, there is a simple way to cancel them: CatalogChoice.org.

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Goodbye, Junk Mail: Step 3 (Cancel Your Weekly Shopping Flyers)

If you missed Step 1: Save Your Junk, click HERE.
If you missed Step 2: Opt Out of Credit Card Offers, click HERE.

If you've been collecting your junk mail for any length of time now, you have a few weekly shopping flyers, or grocery circulars.  Perhaps you actually use these ads and coupons, in which case you might want to keep receiving them.  I never use the coupons and don't look at the ads, so these are junk mail for me.

Even if you do peruse the ads and coupons, consider checking out the ads and printing out the coupons you want online instead (see links below).  Canceling these mailing saves resources, energy, and keeps clutter out of your house!  As a side benefit, by only looking at ads that you bother to seek out (instead of looking at all the ads that advertisers want you to look at), you may find yourself "needing" less and buying less.

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Goodbye, Junk Mail: Step 2 (Opt Out of Credit Card Offers)

If you missed Step 1, click HERE.

This is possibly the most important step in your journey to Junk Mail Freedom: opting out of credit card offers (as well as insurance offers).  That's because this is an identity theft issue.  We actually opted out several years ago.  If you currently get these credit card and insurance offers in the mail, I hope you are shredding them before you recycle them.

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Goodbye, Junk Mail: Step 1 (Save Your Junk)

It's embarrassing that I still get junk mail, it really is.  I even get the weekly grocery circular, even though I recycle it without even looking at it.  And I get an astonishing array of catalogs.  Thankfully, I don't get credit card offers.  I stopped those some years back, as those are an identity theft issue. (And with my hispanic surname, I am at greater risk of identity theft.  My husband actually suffered a bout of identity theft about a decade ago.)  In my defense, I have moved 4 times in the last 4 years, and each time I move, a new round of junk mail finds me.  So this time, I'm going to record how I get rid of my junk mail for the benefit of my future self as well as for the benefit of my readers.

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