The original version of this article was posted over at My Two Dollars about 2 years ago.
One of the ways that retailers used to trick me out of my money would be to send countless catalogs straight into my home, day-in and day-out. These shiny pretty booklets of stuff I “had to have” made me want to part ways with my money and clutter up my home…I mean, who would not need the latest and greatest from the Sharper Image? I found myself wanting various fruit peelers I had no need for, new stereos when the one I had worked just fine, cookware I would never use – the list went on and only got bigger as each catalog arrived. Man, I could not wait for the newest Crutchfield catalog – all those car stereos drove me wild!
And then I stopped them all from coming into my home.
The reason I stopped them all was that I figured out I was falling for the items in these catalogs. I was a marketer’s dream – I had money (at least I thought I did), I was a single guy who loved gadgets and cars, and I would accept all this junk mail coming to my home every day of the week. I found myself marking pages so I could easily find the things I wanted to buy! But this all changed years ago when I realized that these catalogs were encouraging me to part with my hard-earned money for random crap that I had no need for at all. I started calling the numbers in the catalogs to get removed from the lists, which only partially worked. I started filing opt-out letters, which also stopped some of them. Eventually I was only receiving a few that both my future wife (at the time) and I actually wanted to receive, and now we don’t even receive those. We figure if it is out of sight, it is out of mind. You cannot be interested in things that you don’t even know exist!
The last thing we did was use CatalogChoice.org, which can stop all catalogs from coming to your house – for free. There are many services out there that charge you to stop junk mail, but these guys do it right by making it easy and making it free. So if you still receive some catalogs you would rather not receive, check them out. But definitely put a stop to receiving catalogs in general, as not only is a waste of paper, a waste of gas for their delivery (think of the weight of millions of these!), a source of clutter and a waste of your own time spent reading them, but they can also cost you money by convincing you that you need more stuff.
And trust me…none of us need more stuff! 🙂
I <3 CatalogChoice.org! And I also have a canned response set up in Gmail so I can quickly email other companies.
Like you, I didn’t need any more temptation to buy stuff. And it is easier now when I’m not oo-ing and aw-ing over gadgets in catalogs constantly — or feeling like I have to use a “great” coupon just because I got it. Plus, it’s nice to know that fewer resources are being used and I like not having to spend as much time sorting mail.
It’s taken a bit of work and it’s an ongoing process, but the volume of mail I get has dropped considerably and it has been well worth it. The only company that doesn’t seem to be getting the hint after repeated mailings is the Limited brands (Bath & Body Works, Victoria Secret, etc.) — which is really annoying since not only did I never sign up to receive their frequent mailings, they even get my name wrong! Suffice it to say, I now have NO interest in going back to any of those stores. And that should be a lesson to companies who don’t see the harm in filling up people’s mail boxes with junk they do NOT want and wasting our time since someone has to sort the mail.
Catalog Choice has helped, but there are still a couple of stubborn catalogs that pop up periodically. My next step is to contact them directly.
Some don’t deal with Catalog Choice and dont listen to them, so contacting directly is the only way…if they will listen to us! 🙂