Day 156

Years ago, I gave up sending change of address cards.  The truth of the matter was that by the time I got them sent, it was usually time for the military to send us packing.  I once had a friend that pointed out my entry in her contact management system, which ten years ago, was a floral address book.  She had worn holes in the pages from erasing and rewriting our information.

My point?  It is difficult to find us.

Unless you are a catalog company, which apparently hires physics to forecast where consumers are going to move next.  More than once, we have arrived at a new home to find nestled in the mailbox the provocative pages of Lands End,  Grandin Road or L.L. Bean.   It is like the modern day version of the welcome wagon.

Welcome to the neighborhood, here are five different phonebooks which you are never going to use because you ONLY look phone numbers up on the internet, a 10% off coupon to Lowes and three Pottery Barn Catalogs. Enjoy!

At about the five month mark in this particular home, here is the stack of catalogs that I had accumulated

A tower of potential purchases

At first, I just stacked them there to remind myself to call the companies and cancel them.  But time passed, as it does when one is procrastinating a chore. And I started to become amused by the sheer volume.  So I had this great idea that I would keep all of the year’s junk mail and then write some hard hitting yet droll blog post about those crazy catalog companies, yuk, yuk.

Then came the proverbial catalog that toppled the pile.  Actually that’s not a proverb so much as what happened.

The Fall Sourcebook from Restoration Hardware*, the mother of all contemporary catalogs at about an inch and a half thick

It would seem, the weight of all those fabulous drawer pulls and specialty lighting caused a landslide.

I was no longer amused.

So, I policed up all of the catalogs and transferred them to the recycling bin.  At the suggestion of a friend, I opted out of them using a website called Catalog Choice. She swears by it and it was much easier than chasing the correct links individually.

I also found an opt out for phone books here, but it’s run by the phone book association, so I am suspicious.

*Incidentally, I noticed there were 28 resale listings for the Sourcebook on EBay (can I get a big What the Hell?) which is odd since they are free if you fill out the form on Restoration Hardware’s website.