how I've stopped being a catalog cow

I really really don't like all of the catalogs delivered to me in my mail.  Especially when I start receiving mounds of them for baby clothes and toys when I don't have any children. Or worse, the catalogs geared to the elderly full of muumuu dresses and foot callous scrapers.  Great, thanks. I imagine that buying presents for nieces and nephews or friend's kids has put me on the list for children's merch, but what on earth did I ever buy that flagged me for geriatric?  Did a catalog fairy see me scuffling around the house in my velour track suit?  A giant tent dress does sound comfy....  Stop!  Get these marketing mind-reading bastards out of my house. 

It doesn't matter, really, how I got on any mailing list.  I just want it to stop.  

Except for a couple of art museum, gardening or home designer type catalogs, I recycle 99.9% of the catalogs that come to me and find it to be a massive waste of paper, time, and energy - mine, the earth's, the postal service's and so on.  Why should I be a cow shuffling catalogs from my post, sorting it to the trash or recycling, then hauling it off?  Or am I a dog playing fetch?   I don't feel playful about it. Whatever the analogy, I shouldn't have to touch it at all.  Maybe I'm just dreaming like a princess, but it's worth putting up at least a little fight.   I'm sure I'm preaching to the choir.  Almost everyone feels that they get too many catalogs, don't they?

Before I get off my soap box, I feel compelled to report on one thing that I've done that has helped.  A non-profit service called Catalog Choice has significantly helped reduce all the unwanted catalogs in my mail.  After about a year of new online or offline shopping, my address gets circulated again and I have to add some stop requests to my account or renew old ones, but it has helped. It hasn't completely stopped the catalogs coming, like my inner princess would like, but it's the best I've found so far. 

It's free for their main service, though they take donations (tax deductible). You can also find catalogs through them, too if you so desire (which sounds insane to me, but do as one wishes).  It could also make a good gift for the elderly or persons less inclined to get online and fight the catalog current for themselves. If you are interested, check them out HERE.  If you have any other suggestions, let's hear 'em.  This is one problem that I welcome a shotgun of solutions. 

take a load off Mac-ee

Last winter my Mac G5 desktop died. Luckily I didn't need to panic.  Months before  I had bought a laptop so I could work with more flexibility as we travel more and more, so it wasn't a crisis.  But I was left with a big heavy pile of metal. 

I researched what to do and found Apple does have a reuse and recycling program.  On a web page you enter the type of computer to be recycled into a form which calculates what the machine may be worth for a store credit.  Sounded fine by me.  Mine was worth nothing.  At best it might have brought $50 if it weren't dead.  Sheesh.  Even worth nothing, the recycling program was willing to take this model and they pay for the shipping as long as I packed it up.  I couldn't find the stupid box.  Our basement is like a museum of boxes, but apparently I didn't hang on to this one, or even one box big and stable enough for this towering heap.  

Determined to get this big ass metal box out of my office right then but not just stick it on the curb for the trash, I called the guys at Recompute Missoula, to beg them to take it.  They said, "Yes!" 

I bagged the installation discs and the power cord and hauled it out and over there immediately.  After leaving their store, I felt so relieved with just the possibility of parts being salvaged and reused. 

No shit, while I drove away "Take a Load Off Maggie" was playing on the radio!  So, I tried harmonizing with my own variation, "Take a Load Off Mac-ee."  Ha!  

Yeah, okay, this might by my dorkiest confession on this blog yet.