Entries from November 2011 ↓

I think the only time I benefitted from a mail order catalog was when I taped a large poster of a sexy girl into our shower to freak out Jon when he opened the curtain the next morning.

In actuality, the only reasons I check my mailbox at all are A) because Maddox likes to check the mailbox B) sometimes my Mom sends me holiday cards, and obviously, C) so squatters don’t think our home is vacant and move in.

DMA, All the Way

(Catchy, no? You’d think, as an association of marketers, they would have thought of this one.) Anyway, in an attempt to cut down on the amount of postal mail we receive, I checked out greendimes.com, which directed me to the Direct Marketing Association.

Using DMA, I did the following:

• Removed my name from credit card offers
• Removed my address from catalogs
• Removed my address from magazine offers
• Removed my address from other mail offers
• Removed my emails from national email lists

It’s cool (is it, Leanne? Is it really) because you can also manually opt out of places you’ve purchased from, since I guess those places are allowed to spam you once you buy. You can also report companies who haven’t stopped sending mail after 90 days, which appeals to my sense of justice and also my need to make trivial matters personal crusades.

Other Neat Tricks

While I was down this particular internet rabbit hole, I also reregistered with Do Not Call and read a Consumer Alert on How to Protect My Identity from Being Stolen.

This lead to checking my credit report after finding out that, by law, you get a free report each year. Way to feed my paranoia, FTC.

This was actually pretty helpful, as I found out that my Victoria’s Secret Angels Card had never been canceled, despite a request filed a year or so ago, which brings us full circle, back to sexy hotness.

Still More, But Not As Neat, Tricks

From here, I realized that I needed to renew our passports and get one for Maddox, which lead to a pile of unsexy paperwork and several OCD lists of all the documents I have to fill out or gather. But let’s pretend that’s just as hot as catalogs and Angels, shall we?

Contrary to the title, the blog 365 Days of Trash could actually be called 365 Days of Zero Trash, or 365 Days Without Throwing Crap Out, But Also Without Hoarding In Scary Amounts. Come to think of it, 365 Days of Trash is a lot catchier than either of those titles, so rock on, Dave.

About 6 months ago, I decided to stop doing really extreme things that absorb my attention entirely for a span of 6 weeks then become so repugnant that I give them up entirely and subconsciously rebel against these activities from that day forth. To name a few:

• Horticulture. I used to have gorgeous container plants that bloomed even when they weren’t supposed to (purple flowers!), the product of intense research of optimal plant conditions, matching photos to identify of label-less plants, and mixing huge quantities of soil on my living room carpet (Jon is a very understanding house-mate.) Fast forward to now: there are several dead or dying plants in my basement (next to windows, I’m not a sadist!), our own yellowing, chlorophyll versions of Mrs. Rochester, but thankfully, without the benefit of matches and opposable thumbs with which to light them.
• Real Estate Closings. As part of my first post-college job, I learned all about title processing for mostly residential properties, tax certifications, and peculiar state laws for refinances. This stopped when I was enrolled in a Notary Public course so I could conduct closings, and I realized that the part I was most looking forward to was getting one of those cool seals that made the paper stick up in a circular pattern.
• Sewing. To this day, I enjoy running off very simple sewing projects (hemming, no-nonsense curtains, basic pillow patterns) but at one point, I was making dresses and shirts, and stockpiling old patterns like a couture-obsessed squirrel.

Anyway, you get the picture. I have more or less done this since childhood, when my very tolerant parents used to allow me to fill my bedroom with paper chains (literally fill, you had to crawl through it to the bed) and spray paint in my room (a habit that persisted until college, when the size of my dorm room exacerbated the fumes, knocking me out).

So, instead of being all intense about this new thing, my Zero Trash But Anti-Hoarding Project, I’m just picking a few things to try, and seeing if they have any impact on our lives and those of polar bears. It’s conveniently complementary to my nature, as I frequently go OCD on my house and dump piles of things on the curb – or, in the case of the last time our friends Chris & Lauren visited, surreptitiously  fill their bags with items from my pantry in hopes that they’d carry them off when they left. (They did. Muahahaha hope you guys like carbohydrates.)

Also, if I don’t ever collect this stuff in the first place, it’ll free up my time for other OCD tasks, like arranging my books alphabetically by author (then title) and moving all the living room furniture around when Jon’s out of the house. (Which is kind of how I clean – cleaning is boring, but if you combine cleaning with moving furniture that is taller than you and three times as wide, it’s a lot more entertaining.)

So, stay tuned for updates as I give this a shot – I’ve already tried writing a holiday eletter with Mailchip instead of sending a postal letter (like I would have bothered to do that anyway) and my next task is to sign up for  a service like the DMA’s opt out of junk mail or greendimes.com. Or, I might just call a bunch of the companies that send me mail and pretend to be a leftwing nut who believes aliens live in the post office and getting off the mailing list is the only way to stop their communication with the mother ship, which of course, wants to eat our brains. Wish me (and whomever I call) luck!