Lighten up: less junk mail
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Yes, you can reduce the number of unwanted catalogs and unsolicited mailings your receive in the future!
Happily there are now easier ways to get your name off mailing lists than to contact each individual company with a request to remove your name. While still a bit of a chore, taking some action now will pay off over and over again. Here is what you can do:
Register with the Direct Marketing Association, (dmachoice.org), a free opt-out service. When you register with this service, your name will be put on a "delete" file and made available to direct-mail marketers and organizations that use the DMA's Mail Preference Service. Category choices are catalogs, magazine offers, and other mail offers, and you can choose whether to opt out of all offers or only ones that you specify. DMA recommends that you create unique accounts for each household member and advises that your request will take 60 to 90 days to process. For more information, see their FAQ page.
Use Catalog Choice (catalogchoice.org), another free opt-out service now managed by the nonprofit The Story of Stuff Project. Once you have signed up for an account, you create an address book in which you can specify multiple names (family members or variations on your own name), and multiple addresses (other places where you receive junk mail or variations on addresses). You then search their database for the name of the catalog, choose which combination of name and address appears on the mailing label, add the source code and key code, if any, and submit your request. Catalog Choice tracks your activity and the status of each request. For more information, see their FAQ page.
Sign up with OptOutPrescreen (optoutprescreen.com), the official consumer credit reporting industry website endorsed by the Federal Trade Commission. Sign up with this free service to reduce the number of unsolicited credit and insurance offers your receive in the mail. You can choose whether to block these offers for five years or to permanently block them. You will be required to submit your social security number and date of birth, but the FTC assures consumers that this information will be kept confidential and used only to process your request. For more information, see this page on the FTC website