The Other R and Ending Junk Mail

 

Tis the season for catalogs from every retailer you've ever interacted with filling your mailbox! If you're snowed in under all the junk mail, the web site CatalogChoice.Org may be a game changer. It's essentially a "Do Not Call" list for your mailbox and you can directly unsubscribe from hundreds of catalogs or receive assistance in communicating a cease-mail succinctly and quickly with businesses that are not listed.

 

I first found the free-to-use site in 2015 after reading Zero Waste Home by Bea Johnson, which taught me that ahead of, and far more impactful than, the oft-mentioned "Three R's" of mindful consumption (reduce, reuse, recycle) is REFUSE, which means: don't allow the stuff you don't want into your life by not accepting it in the first place. Stopping waste before it exists and enters the waste stream completely eliminates any need for further action and wasting your energy to conscientiously discard it later. (There is also a 5th R: rot, which is mindful discarding through composting.) I'll spell this out, in case you, like me, take a few hundred repetitions to get it. You can just say no--refuse the stuff and that is the end of your journey with the stuff you don't want in the first place. WHAT?! This honestly blew my mind (once it landed). As a dyed-in-the-wool, people-pleasing Southern woman, aged 35 (at the time) it had never occurred to me that I was allowed to say no...to ANYTHING (or at least without accompanying said request with an apology for living) and move on with my life. No kidding. I didn't pick that up in prestigious college education or in any of my various important-sounding office jobs. I was suddenly drunk with my own power.

 

I gathered every catalog and mailer in sight to get going in my "Just Say No to Mail" campaign. I gleefully entered customer and offer numbers into the web site as I purged one vendor after another from the list of mailbox scrubs. As the stack of current mailers dwindled, I eagerly awaited every postal delivery so I could pounce on would-be interlopers. I even solicited the permission of family members to cleanse their mailboxes (especially my mother, who was still receiving catalogs in my name at my hometown address 18 years after I went away to college). In just a matter of a couple of weeks, there was virtually NO trash in my mailbox. Amazing. My mailbox was peaceful, yes, but I think it's safe to say the solicitation-free mailbox was emblematic of a much larger battle I realized I had won. After that initial overhaul, I have revisited the site any time I wind up on a new mailing list and within 30 seconds, I'm back to mailbox zero.

 

 

So if you missed it earlier: CatalogChoice.Org (the .org is important!). I don't get any monetary remuneration from you clicking the link or anything (and the site is free to use), but I will probably take a tremendous amount of satisfaction in seeing how many outclicks I get to that link and thinking, obviously, of the Earth. 

 

And if you, like me 7 years ago, are just breathing into the space of "you're allowed to say no, the excitement begins as the whole world of "things you can say no to" appears before your eyes.

Think of all the junky stuff you've been handed in the disguise of "fun" because it's called a giveaway- the key chains and refrigerator magnets and jar openers and door stops branded by a random business, not to mention the plastic bags they come in. (Can't wait to share with y'all my thoughts on bags!) Some of this stuff you might actually want (thank you businesses for my many chip clips!), but more than likely it either goes straight to the trash or sits unused, unwanted and trashes up your home and life. So refuse it and that will be the beautiful ending of the story.