December 10, 2009

‘Tis the season….for catalog overload

We were out of town for less than a week, but in that short time a full tray of mail accumulated for us at the Larchmont Post Office. All of it, with the exception of the Larchmont Ledger, the Sound and Town and a few holiday cards, was colorful catalogs that we will never peruse.

Over the past few years I’ve made a concerted effort to go paperless. Bank statements and phone bills, credit card statements and department store promotions pop up like clockwork on my computer screen. We’ve let lapse subscriptions to the magazines that, month after month, went from the mailbox to the coffee table to the recycling bin, without ever being read. And we’ve dutifully notified retailers through CatalogChoice.org that we do not want their glossy promotions. (Besides, in this economy, I'm trying to support our local retailers as much as possible.)
It was working. The amount of paper we carted to the curb each Wednesday was getting noticeably smaller. It was, that is, until the calendar turned to December.

The five-day accumulation we picked up at the Post Office included catalogs from
  • Pier 1
  • Eddie Bauer (holiday gift guide)
  • Eddie Bauer (last minute gifts)
  • Mrs. Beasley’s
  • UnderGear (we can’t figure out why our over-60 household received that one!)
  • L.L. Bean
  • Dell
  • National Geographic
  • True Value
  • Dell
I’m sure there were fewer catalogs this year than in years past, but there are still far too many trees being destroyed to print these mailers, and it isn’t hard to imagine the aches and pains our postal workers feel during this season.


So back to CatalogChoice.org I go. Bah humbug.


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