Catalog Overload.

I've been out and about all day going to MD appointments, getting hopefully my last mani/pedi before the wee one arrives and catching up with an old friend.  Get this.  I've known this person since kindergarten and, after a year of me living in Boston, we finally met up for coffee.  It was so good to see her and to catch up and to pick her brain about pregnancy and labor and being a mom (she has two kids) and to talk politics and future life plans.  It was just so nice overall.  Can't wait to do it again.

Question for you:  Do you get a ridiculous number of catalogs and mailers and junk in your mail like we do?  It is obnoxious.  I swear, every time I buy something online or in a store, a shiny new catalog appears in my mailbox 4 weeks later.  Here's the thing... it's 2012!!  We all have access to online shopping!!  Catalogs are a thing of the past!  Sure, it's nice to flip through the glossy pages and look at the pretty things in a catalog but it's also ridiculously wasteful especially when you can go online and see all the same stuff with the click of a mouse!

About a year ago, I was bitching about this exact thing with a friend (imagine that!) and someone overheard us and asked if we'd heard about this website called Catalog Choice.  It is a free service that allows you to request companies to stop sending you catalogs and it actually works!!  I used to receive a Victoria's Secret catalog at least twice a month and it was basically the same catalog just rearranged a bit.  Once I put in the request through Catalog Choice, the bi-monthly Victoria's Secret catalogs stopped coming.  It was a miracle!!  Here's the other cool thing... let's say you like getting a particular company's catalog but you only like getting it at Christmas or in the summer... you can put that into your request and ask to only receive seasonal catalogs!  Pretty amazing.  And that little photo-of-facts up there?  Those are my stats of environmental benefits since signing up with Catalog Choice.  Pretty awesome.

What are your thoughts on catalogs?  Sure, you can recycle a catalog when you are finished flipping through the pages but wouldn't it be better to not even have them made to begin with?  All of those products are available online for your viewing pleasure!  Remember, I'm a self-proclaimed enviro-geek.  Nerd alert!!