No Junk Mail

For some reason, direct marketers in our area seem to think that the Joneses really like catalogues.  We get heaps of them.  Catalogues for white goods, consumables, obscure and weird products, and most strangely, specials catalogues for supermarkets which are more than 15km away from our place, despite the one local supermarket being a short walk away.

Given that we're trying to move away from rampant consumerism, into more durable goods, reduce our footprint, produce more of what we need on site, and also given there's only so many colour catalogues which are useful as mulch, at some point it's all got to stop.

We tried putting a no junk mail sticker on our letter box (took us a while to find one), and within 2 weeks, someone had taken the sticker off (at considerable effort  - you can see where it was), and the junk mail was piling up again.  We tried a hand written sign with sticky tape, it faded.  For a short period of time, we just gave up and just took the catalogues from the mailbox to the recycling bin every... single... day.  Shame on us, bad Joneses!

And then a few weeks ago, a nice surprise happened.  We renewed our subscription to the Australian Conservation Foundation, and in our first magazine was a free "no junk mail" sticker, which sits in pride of place on our letter box. And the tide of junk mail has stopped, while also helping a very worthy organisation.  Hooray.