Tossing It Out Tuesday: Junk Mail

            If your household is like mine, I'm sure you get your fair share of junk mail.  My wife and I try to dispose of as much as we can as it comes in, but sometimes it just gets set aside if it looks like it might be something I might possibly want to check out.  I know what my regular bills look like and I recognize something personal from someone I know, so those are easy to separate and take care of immediately.  But there are those other curious pieces of mail that might be worthwhile and need further investigation.

             There is that mail that looks "official" or otherwise important that one discovers upon opening is really a sneaky attempt to extract money from their wallet.  I've gotten pretty good at spotting those, but some pieces still end up in the "to be checked later when I have time" pile.   And there are certain special offers that maybe I might be interested in but I don't have time to look right now.  They also go into the "look at later" pile. Eventually after a few days I have a small stack of mail over which decisions need to be made.  Out of this pile may evolve another "I really don't have time for this right now and I'll look again later" pile which accumulates on a kitchen counter until it is moved into my office.

             Much of this eventually turns into an "it's been so long that now I don't remember what it is, but I must have saved it for a reason and it could be important" pile that gets shifted into a box.  By the time I usually get to this mail, it is usually so outdated that if it did have any importance it is now irrelevant.  I need to learn to stop the flow before it ever gets this far.  Tossing out the unnecessary mail needs to be completed before it ever makes it to the kitchen shelf.

             In any case, I've been trying to cull through old mail in my tossing it out cleanings and break my habit of setting aside these things that I might think are important.   Actually the culling process started several years ago, not only by me, but also by the companies that send the mail.  Many of the companies now send offers electronically through e-mail, which certainly saves paper waste.  Also, I've stopped ordering as many things as I used to, entering contests, making inquiries, or using certain credit cards, which has apparently caused some of the companies to lose interest and stop sending as much junk to me.  Maybe they think I died or moved to another country or something.   Maybe a lot of those companies have gone out of business due to the bad economy.  Whatever the case may be, my junk mail has decreased tremendously over the past several years.  Each of the photos in my post represent about one average week of junk mail.  In the past, I have seen some days where there was this much mail.

             Still, there is some junk mail that remains and now my mission is to track it down and send it to the recycling bin.   Currently, as I am organizing papers in files, drawers, and boxes, I am discarding all irrelevant junk that had been previously set aside.  Since keeping the junk mail in check is something that has been ongoing for many years,  the problem is not extreme by any means.  Lest anyone has concerns there is serious hoarding going on here please be assured that the accumulation is minor.  But there is some junk that still needs to be tossed.  The clean up continues.

             How is your junk mail situation?  Have you taken any steps to control it?   Have you found any creative uses for junk mail?   What is your favorite junk mail?    What kind of junk mail do you dislike the most?