Glee of saving trees

I used to love the influx of catalogs into our home. The previous residents must have been bedridden shopaholics, based on the sheer quantity of catalogs they continued to receive after they moved out. And after the birth of Chebbles, I couldn't handle any more sophistocated reading than the "Soft Surroundings" catalog.

So I'd stack up the catalogs on my nightstand and devour them as Chebbles nursed in the middle of the night. "Oooh, tunics!" I'd say, and fold over the pages of particularly tempting items.

But now, as part of my heartless sweep through our home, I'm ridding ourselves of anything I consider extraneous (how did I accumulate so much fruit tea? I don't like fruit tea...), and catalogs are under extreme scrutiny. I'm cancelling every last catalog that dares enter our home. (This has amounted to more than two dozen catalogs at this point.)

There are some companies that I do shop from -- e.g., Red Envelope, as they always have cool stuff in fancy boxes, and they donate 5% of the purchase price to Chebbles' college fund -- but I don't need their paper catalog anymore. I can always find better things -- sale items, special promotions -- on their website anyway.

So all hail the new Catalog Choice website! I'm now using them to cancel everything. They keep track of the catalogs I've cancelled, and if I continue to receive a catalog 10 weeks from the time I cancelled it, I can report them as "IN VIOLATION" of my do-not-receive dictate. Ooooh, I can't wait.