Opting Out of Catalogs

Now that the holidays are behind us, you may have noticed that you are receiving new catalogs in the mail simply because of your recent holiday shopping patterns.  There's a way to opt out of receiving most of these catalogs without having to contact each individual retailer.  Catalog Choice is a free service that offers opt-out requests for individual companies from one web site.  I used this service when they first came on the scene in 2007 and have noticed a drastic reduction in the number of catalogs landing in my mailbox.

The are also now offering a premium service where, for an annual $20 donation, they will communicate opt-outs to the third-party marketing companies that trade your name and personal information based on your buying history and behavioral characteristics.  This stops more mail at the source and enhances your privacy protection.  You may sign up for up to four name and address combinations that you want Catalog Choice to submit for unlisting. 

Save trees, stop catalogs from cluttering up your home, and protect your privacy by signing up at www.catalogchoice.org. 

The Gardener's Notebook

Earlier, I posted about planting strategies that you can use to make gardening easier and more fruitful.

One of the organizing tools that I have used since I first began gardening in our yard some fifteen years ago, is a Gardener's Notebook. I started with a gardening hanging file and after quickly outgrowing that, I upgraded to a three-ring binder with a cover that zips closed. When choosing my notebook, I gravitated towards the kid's section of the office supply store because their notebooks are always so much more fun. The one I use is covered in some kind of heavy-duty microfiber with fuzzy flowers on the front. You could also make your own like the ones in the flickr photo above. The photographer, Lana Stewart, uses cool scrapbook paper to dress up her three-ring binders.

Inside my handy Gardener's Notebook are:

• Tabbed pages to divide the sections. My sections include:
• Annualized Schedule - list of when to fertilize and prune different plants. I've also loaded this schedule into my Outlook calendar to help keep me on track with these chores.
  
• Hosta (I LOVE hosta so they get their own tab)
• Misc. Shade Plants
  
• Soil Amending
• Landscaping Plans
• Feng Shui Gardening
  
• Vendors for Plants, Stones, and Supplies

• Plastic 8 1/2 x 11" sleeves to hold gardening catalogs. I only keep a few and throw out the old when the new one arrives. I mostly use these for the inspiration that the pretty photos provide.
  

• Zipper pocket to hold receipts and plant markers. This has been helpful when I have needed to determine what variety of a particular plant I have. Because we have so many leaves in the fall, garden markers get raked up in my garden. So now I just slip them in my notebook for safekeeping.

• Plastic picture sleeves to hold photos of the garden. My favorite feature of my Gardening Notebook! It's so inspiring to see how small plants, shrubs and trees fill out over the years. If you stick with it and are lucky enough to stay in the same place for a few years, gardening really teaches you patience.
  

By keeping all of my research notes and plant lists in one spot, I have saved myself lots of time and energy whenever I have built a new bed in the garden or have needed to replace a plant that has outgrown its space. The notebook also helps me stay on schedule with all of my gardening maintenance chores and enables me to better track which plants work and don't work in my yard. What tools do you gardeners out there use to keep your info organized?

Put Your Mailbox On A Diet

Want to lighten the load of junk mail that lands in your mailbox every week? I think I've found a great solution at www.catalogchoice.org. Catalog Choice is a free service that allows you to decide what catalogs get delivered to you.

Sponsored by the Ecology Center, the service has been endorsed by the National Wildlife Federation and the Natural Resources Defense Council. According to their web site, Catalog Choice's mission is to reduce the number of repeat and unsolicited catalog mailings, and to promote the adoption of sustainable industry best practices.

Here's how it works:

• You go to www.catalogchoice.org and sign up for a free account.
• You'll be directed to a list of paper catalogs commonly sent to consumers. Check off the ones you no longer wish to receive. If you don't see a particular catalog, click on the "Suggest a Catalog" link.
  
• Catalog Choice notifies these merchants to take you off their mailing list. Many of these merchants are happy to do so because it reduces their costs.
  
• Within a couple of months you'll see a reduction in the number of catalogs you receive.
  

I signed up in November with a big stack of holiday catalogs in front of me. Since then, the number of catalogs landing in my recycling bin has drastically gone down.

There are couple of reasons why I love this service. First, over three million tons of trees are consumed each year in the production of paper catalogs not to mention the additional resources that are then used to mail these wish books to our houses and businesses.

Secondly, if you're like me, you probably get way too many catalogs from the same companies throughout the year, especially during the holidays. There are very few of these catalogs that I even open. I do most of my shopping online so many of these companies are wasting their money sending me all these catalogs because I'm already a loyal customer! I just do my browsing on the computer instead of by flipping pages.

Finally, I've organized, recycled, and contained a crazy amount of catalogs for my clients over the years. Through this process, I've discovered that unread catalogs haunt many people because they fear they may be missing out on items that they "need." So, the catalogs accumulate and, for some, the debt rises as they do, indeed, find tempting treasures in those glossy pages. I suspect that they would spend less if they weren't barraged with images from their daily catalog deliveries.

I challenge you to go on a catalog diet. Join the 450,000 consumers and businesses that have cut down on their paper, time and financial clutter by signing up for Catalog Choice.