Our mailbox is not near our front door.  We have to walk a quarter of a mile to get our mail.  This is what happens when your front yard is too big.  The mail carrier isn’t expected to turn into long driveways.  So, you get your morning exercise while retrieving the mail.  Lately, this has become more of a chore.  Due to the Covid pandemic, and increased shopping online or by mail, companies have started sending out more printed catalogs. As a result, we’re carrying out heavier loads of trash.  A vicious cycle.  Help! We’re deluged with catalogs.

It’s fairly inexpensive for companies to mail a catalog.  Postage costs run about 50 to 70 cents.  The price of the printed material varies greatly.  Classy catalogs with glossy paper and beautiful photos cost a lot more.  Those  flyers with sleazy paper and sloppy print jobs are a lot cheaper.  Apparently, printed catalogs pay off, or companies wouldn’t keep sending them.   Nevertheless, they ought to realize that octogenarians don’t buy many new clothes or household goods.

We succumb to the lure of the catalog shopping  a couple of times a month.  Somewhere in catalog heaven, someone is keeping a list of those purchases, and we’re considered fair game..  But today was the last straw, when I saw a catalog almost two inches thick in our mailbox. It must have weighed five pounds, and came from a company we’ve never heard of.   After lugging it into the house along with one first class letter,  a slew of third class mail and four other catalogs, I was exhausted.  And mad.

We’ve tried to stop the deluge by writing “refused” on the unwanted catalogs in black ink, and dropping them off at the post office.   Doesn’t work.  What must we do?  I went online, and this is what I found under e how:

“There’s no one simple way to permanently stop catalogs from coming to your home. The United States Postal Service and/or your individual mail carrier can’t do anything to help since they’re obligated to deliver any mail that’s addressed to you. The only way to cancel catalogs is to go directly to the source: the company or companies that send them to you. You can do this yourself as each new catalog arrives in your mailbox. Check the front or back of the catalog for contact information and call the company to ask to be removed from the catalog mailing list or visit the retailer’s website to see if there’s an opt-out form you can complete online.”

Is it reasonable to expect a recipient to spend maybe hours per day calling each and every company, going through various voice mails, finally  speaking to a customer service representative whom you can barely understand?  And then, a month later, when you receive yet another one of their catalogs, will you repeat the process?

Help! We’re being deluged with catalogs and we want it to stop.