The Catalogs Keep Coming
It’s that time of year again at Our Little House. I’m not talking about the time to have the wood burning stove checked or wrapping up the garden.
It’s that time of year when direct mail catalog companies start mailing out all of those fall catalog, hoping you will want to start planning all of those gifts you’re going to buy for the holidays.
They started arriving about a month ago.
I’ve pretty well gotten our unwanted catalog situation under control, so the mountain of cluttering paperwork I cleared out before hosting guests at the first of the month was mostly other stuff.
However, some were catalogs, which tells me that updating the list with Catalog Choice will most likely never end. Catalog Choice is a wonderful website that allows you to input a company’s name, they will contact the company for you, asking them to remove you – or in my case a family member – from their database.
Most of the unwanted catalog we are still receiving are in my mother’s name. She was the queen of catalog buying, especially in the last few years of her life. Still, I think ridiculous that 3.5 years after her death, I’m still dealing with mail coming in her name.
I’ve input three more just this week to our extensive list on Catalog Choice. Of course, the unwanted catalogs go in the recycle bin.
What do you do to get off direct mailing lists?
Living Large Community: Watch for a special guest post/giveaway on Monday and another giveaway later in the week in honor of our 1-year anniversary!
We just back from vacation and the stack of catalogs and magazines were literally two feet high. I have found a new solution — our library has a magazine exchange. So now I take all of my magazines there (with the address label cut off) so others can enjoy them. The catalog still go in the recycle bin though
I wish our library had a magazine exchange, but I usually take our magazines to the county nursing home when I'm done with them.
I kind of like catalogs and I'm not getting any. I'm really thinking about requesting a seed catalog for next year's garden. Dreaming big about vibrant, beautiful flowers and a bountiful crop of vegetables keeps me replanting every year.
Think green, Heather! I like to have some reading materials in my hands, too, but catalogs are simply a waste of resources when you can go online and see the same inventory (and in some cases, even more!)
We switched from a P.O. box to street mail delivery a couple of years ago, and at pretty much the same time I decided to commit to buying stuff locally. We'd never been big catalog folks anyway, but that took care of the rest. We get one or two catalogs from small mail order outfits a year, but not the endless stream form the big ones. I love not having the clutter and not browsing a bunch of stuff I don't need. I notice when I do order occasionally from small companies and I do it on the internet almost all have a box to check for not sending paper catalogs.
That's an excellent point, Jenny, about checking the box that indicates that you won't want paper catalogs.
I tried last year, or two years ago, did whatever someone told me to do, but the catalogs keep coming. Sometimes I find that if you call the company direct, for the ones that come every month and some do for us as a B&B, they will stop sending them every month and switch you to once a year.
Alexandra,
Catalog Choice has worked really well for us in getting the bulk of them eliminated. It's a time intensive process each day and an ongoing one because there never seems to be a shortage of direct mail catalog companies, but I've found it so worth it.