What are we talking about today?

I'll get back to theme days once I find a groove of posting regularly. In the meantime, most of my posts are about some variation of books, bikes, buses, or Broadway. Plus bits about writing, nonprofits, and grief from time to time.

This blog is mostly lighthearted and pretty silly. It's not about the terrible things happening in the world, but please know that I'm not ignoring those things. I just generally don't write about them here.

16 August 2011

Less Junk Mail, More Serenity.

This is another post that could fit into a book day or a green living day. I opted to go with book day.

Last weekend, Chad picked up Your Green Abode by Tara Rae Miner for me at the local library, knowing that I like that sort of thing. And I do, although a lot of the tips I've read so far are either impossible in this apartment (she does give a lot of alternatives for renters when she gives a homeowner tip, though) or we're already doing them. But, I did run across a gem that I couldn't resist telling you about.

Junk mail and phone books. Copious amounts of the former arrive in our mailboxes every week, and the latter is copious all by itself, yes? Well, if you are still getting them, here's what you can do (if you're in the US):

Sign up on the National Do Not Mail list.
Opt out of receiving phone books.
Keep those credit card offers out of your mailbox.
Only get the catalogs you want.

I hope you're all as enthused by these as I am. I opted us out of the prescreened offers years ago when I worked for a credit bureau, but the rest of them I'm brand-new to. I'm looking forward to less junk mail, which is turn is less clutter in my house. And fewer things to shred and recycle. And, I hope, more trees in the ground instead of in my mailbox.

Have you ever used any of these services? Do you plan to?

4 comments:

Marian Allen said...

Great! We get almost no mail, and some days we get NONE. It's kinda lonely, but our trees smile at us, so it's worth it.

Marian Allen
Fantasies, mysteries, comedies, recipes

Karen M. Peterson said...

I don't get so much junk mail sent to ME anymore, but we still get all those darned fliers.

Mary@GigglesandGuns said...

I'm all for saving trees bu while you're emailing and opting out of receiving remember that soon 35,000 more people will be put out of work because of post office cutbacks.
Don't forget the days when even your high speed net service is slower than usual. When the major electronic crash comes, and it will, you'll wish you'd kept those people working.
You can recycle those ads and books, thus keeping even more people employed.

Su said...

@Marian: Very nice!

@Karen: Me, too. I wish that every store in Austin didn't send out a weekly circular.

@Giggles: It is true that every action has some sort of unintended consequences. The trouble is, a lot of the ads aren't recyclable (the slick ones, for instance, or the plastic window in so many envelopes) and most of the ones that come are for stores I would never go to-- so I neither need the ad nor do I need to look them up online. I hate for anyone to be put out of work in a recession, but it's not just the post office that's struggling, alas. :/