Go Green and Save Time! Tips to Stop Junk Mail

REPOST!

In honor of the influx of catalogs this time of year that clog your mailbox and clutter your desks, here’s how to fight Junk Mail quickly and efficiently!

A few years ago, frustrated by the time it took me to sort through our mail, and the environmental impact, I went on a junk mail rampage.  We now receive only 1-2 pieces of mail a day, and maybe 1 or 2 a month that weren’t solicited.  It now takes me only a few minutes to take care of our mail each day.  I can easily find bills, pay them on the spot, and file them away.  I don’t impulse buy items I don’t need from catalogs that show up, and I still learn about events and sales because I’ve got an e-mail address dedicated to receiving offers from companies I do want to hear from.

It’s awesome.

Ready to get started?

Here are the websites I recommend most to help with the junk mail battle.

https://www.dmachoice.org/ is a website created by the Direct Marketing Association, and registering your mail preferences with them removes you from the 3,600 marketing companies they represent.  Marketing Companies. That means thousands more actual businesses who use those marketing companies to send their mail.  It’s a great first step.

https://www.optoutprescreen.com/ allows you to opt out of receiving prescreened offers of credit and insurance, it’s a website recommended by the Federal Trade Commission.  Companies you currently do business with may still send you offers “related to your current account” and you’ll have to ask them directly to change your mailing preferences.

https://www.catalogchoice.org/ and http://www.directmail.com/mail_preference/ are two sites that e-mail companies directly on your behalf to remove you from mailing lists.  They’re services designed to streamline the removal process for consumers.  You register with your address, check off the boxes for different companies they need to contact, and they handle it (presumably through automated forms) from there.  They’re not as helpful as the other two, but are an option for supplementation.

Microsoft Excel: I maintain an excel sheet for mailing list removals.  Every time I receive unwanted mail, I open the file and log who the mail was from, date of the removal request, type of removal request (email, phone call), second request date, and any notes (ie, sent to different name at our address, or “we’ll still get tax receipts” etc.)  I average about 6-10 a month, so it’s manageable, and keeping up with it makes mail manageable long term.  It helps me track requests so I don’t call twice if it’s only been a few weeks but I’ve received another catalog.  I’ve also asked certain companies to write a note in my file not to resign me up for their catalog after noticing I’ve called them multiple times 4-8 months apart, and realizing I was being re-added to their mailing list.

Paper Karma – if an excel sheet you manage yourself is not in your bandwidth, you can try the app Paper Karma. It has a free trial and then is a paid subscription service. You take a photo of the return address label and with a few clicks they’ll manage the mail removal request for you. They don’t work as well for more local mail, but are overall very successful and allow you to resubmit a request with just a few clicks if after a few months the mail has not stopped. Over the past year they’ve become my go-to instead of calling companies directly.

There’s hope!

We’re now down to maybe one piece of junk mail a month, because I registered us on every do not mail list I could find and still call every single time I receive mail we don’t want.  It’s a little work up front, but overall it’s saved me a great deal of time and frustration.  I even empty our office recycling with less frequency.

Green = better 🙂