Getting Rid of Junk Mail

Paper, paper, paper.  It does accumulate, doesn't it?  For my part, I can pass up the exciting opportunity from Bank of America promised on the envelope above as well as a good many other offers and solicitations I receive each day by mail.  I'm not alone here, right?

Tonight my daughter came home and hit the computer to get her name off of mailing lists and so was an inspiration to me.  She complained a bit about the process she used, so I went on line and found a few suggestions of my own.  I was directed by an official looking PDF document from the state of North Dakota to the following site:  DMAChoice.org, an online tool developed by the Direct Marketing Association to help people manage what marketing mail they received or don't receive.  You can register with the site and then select the companies you want to receive mail from - or you can blanket select to not receive marketing mail at all.  Now filling out my name and address on a marketing site in order to not receive marketing mail seems a little counter intuitive, but since the referral came from a government site, I'm pretty comfortable doing it.  Any thoughts out there?

I have now gone in and requested no marketing mail in all four categories.  This means that in the next 30 to 90 days, my mail box should get lighter.  This will not stop mail from any companies where I have recently shopped or organizations where I have recently contributed  - and I am not sure how long recently is (I read it, but immediately forgot!)  I'll have to contact them directly if I want to stop their mail. Also, this is only going to affect me and only me as I spell my name, so as I see mail come in to me with a different spelling, I'll need to go into the site and add those names and to stop mail coming for my husband, I'll need to set up an account for him.  It's a process, but I'm on my way.

Now to be fair to the marketers, DMA reminded me that shopping through the mail saves gas expended on trips to the mall, paper is a renewable resource from trees planted specifically for that purpose and direct marketing supports many small businesses.  These are fair points, so let's consider this blog post as a plug to get rid of the paper you don't want, not to give up on direct mail entirely.

Here's a link to a Wiki with a pretty detailed list of other ways you can reduce paper in your household:

Wiki How to Reduce Paper