Growing up, I could never figure out why my parents couldn’t “keep up” with the junk and crap strewn all over the house. As a parent myself, I feel I have done a fairly good job up to this point of maintaining order in my home. The key in that last sentence is “up to this point.” Perhaps it is because the kids are older, life is busier, and spending time with the kids takes priority.

Oh, and then there is the real junk – junk mail. All of that paper – solicitations, catalogs, bulk mail, advertisements, etc., etc., etc., takes up so much space in my mailbox, on my kitchen table, on my desk waiting to be opened just in case it is not junk, and in my life dealing with it all.

According to the Every Monday Matters book, “people will spend 8 months of their lives opening junk mail.” Wow, that irritates me. There is soooo much I’d rather be doing. Sleeping for one.

“100 million trees are needed to produce the annual supply of bulk mail – that’s the equivalent of deforesting the entire Rocky Mountain National Park every four months.” Shocking. I’d offer up other alternatives, but I, and most people I know, have blocked unsolicited junk phone calls, and I am already inundated, marking, and filtering out email spam, so I really have nothing to offer. No junk to offer. How apropos.

What can you do to help save 8 months of your life and quite possibly the rain forests? Ask the companies sending you junk mail to remove your name – this does involve a phone call so make sure your phone number is blocked so you don’t set yourself up for a round of unwanted calls. Write, “Please do not rent or sell my name” anytime you fill ANYTHING out. Contact the credit bureaus and Direct Marketing Associations’ Mail Preference Service and have your name and address removed.

Wouldn’t it be nice to actually discover and open a heartfelt, hand written letter meant just and only for you the next time you visited your mail box? Old fashioned, perhaps, but it is a little thrill these days and I’ll take whatever I can get.