One thing I’ve learned is that I get the same mail week after week. Before this experiment, I’d never paid much attention to my mail. If it looked like junk, it got dropped into the recycle bin without so much as a second thought. Now that I’ve been paying attention, I’ve seen the patterns. On Monday I get such-and-such advertising circular, on Tuesday I get another. About every four weeks, I’ll get a solicitation for the same business. It’s awfully redundant. Though I understand the need for repetition when attempting to sell a product no one actually wants.

So I won’t be bothering to post the fascinating week-by-week updates. I have continued to collect all of the data, and I will still present a result after the third month. So far, though, it’s not looking good. In fact, for some things, I may switch back to paper—the electronic alternatives aren’t quite as useful.

Monday

Memorial Day in the United States, so no mail delivery.

Tuesday

Mail

None.

Junk

• National Geographic Society renewal offer. As nice as the magazine is, I’ve let my subscription lapse, and I never read it enough to justify receiving it. I can always look through it when I’m enjoying some coffee at Barnes & Noble.
• PennySaver advertisements.
• Valpak coupons. I’m pretty sure I’ve never used one of these.

Wednesday

Mail

• Home owner association account statement and newsletter. I’d prefer receiving this via e-mail. The newsletter isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on.

Junk

• RedPlum advertisements.
• Renewal statement for Martha Stewart Living, which Mrs. sirhc used to receive. We’ve let the subscription lapse, along with most others. Who has time to read all of this?

Thursday

Mail

None.

Junk

• Advertisement for the 17th USENIX Security Symposium. I suppose this could technically be considered mail, because I’m a member, but I’d rather they just sent me catalogs like this via e-mail.
• Advertising circular for Dixieline Home Centers.

Friday

Mail

• Proxy voting materials for one of the companies in my stock portfolio. As I cast my vote online, there’s also an option to receive these materials online, but it wasn’t working when I tried it.

Junk

• AAA travel guide. I’d prefer if this was sent on request. We aren’t likely to be taking a vacation for a while. Not only that, but as stated in the guide, all of these offers and more are available on their web site.
• United Mileage Plus credit card offer.
• Local advertisements from the San Diego Union Tribuine.

Saturday

Mail

• June 2008 issue of ;login:, the USENIX magazine.
• July & August 2008 issue of Cook’s Illustrated magazine.
• June 9, 2008 issue of Time magazine.
• Membership packet from the Zoological Society of San Diego.
• Water bill. Now I can see if they have an online delivery option, too.

Junk

• Solicitation from a dentist in Solana Beach. Technically junk, but it’s one of the more creative solicitations I’ve seen. It’s a kind of welcome-to-the-neighborhood card with suggestions for things to do in the Solana Beach/Encinitas area and includes a coupon for a drink at Java Depot. So I felt he was at least worth linking, even though my dental work can be done at a mobile dentist who comes to my office.

I do feel like I’m receiving less mail overall. This week’s score of mail 7, junk 11, for a total of 18 pieces of postal mail, seems to support that feeling. Real mail this week made up 39% of what we found in the mail box. That’s still quite a bit of junk.

One of the reasons I’m so late in publishing this entry is my desire to create a pie chart that would visually document the ratios of mail and junk I’ve received during the past month. I finally got around to entering the data into a Google Docs spreadsheet. Unfortunately, I didn’t weight the results by true volume, so the resulting chart is slightly misleading, at least depending on how one wants to interpret the data. While real mail did make up a plurality of the total, the circulars were physically quite a bit more weighty (literally).

This experiment has caused me to become more aware of the pointlessness of so much of the mail I receive, even from entities with which I have a relationship. Ideally, there should be a box I can mark when joining to receive everything electronically.

I was chatting with a friend of mine about this experiment, and he gave me one good reason why he prefers paper mail. Accountability. Should he ever need to dispute something with his bank or a creditor, he has records at his disposal. Records that are not easily tampered with. I find this to be a compelling argument. Unfortunately, I lack the storage space in my house for such record keeping (let’s hear it for modern development in Southern California). Also, as a side-effect of living in San Diego County, my electronic records will better survive wildfires, should one ever hit us (we’re actually in a fairly well-protected area).

Not Junk

• Letter from the IRS explaining that I should expect my economic stimulus payment last week. It was direct deposited into my account on Thursday.
• Letter from the Toyota dealer informing me that my Avalon is likely due for its 125,000 mile minor service. They include a coupon, which is nice of them. Cheaper than Jiffy Lube.
• Urgent notice from Time magazine that my subscription requires renewal. This one is borderline. I deliberately cancelled my subscription, but I was a paying customer for several years.

Junk

• My non-partisan voter information guide, which recommends a full slate of Republicans. Strange.
• Store circulars from RedPlum. 35 pages. The grocery circulars are actually folded sideways, so they’re only half the number of real pages; however, they’re big enough to count double.

Tuesday

Mail

• 2008 summer schedule for REI’s Outdoor School.

Wednesday

Mail

• Confirmation letter from my credit union that one of my CDs has been automatically renewed.
• June issue of ZooNooz from the San Diego Zoological Society.

Junk

• One week pass to LA Fitness, with an offer to join for “less than $7 per week.” That’s not quite as good as the $24 per year I pay to 24 Hour Fitness.

Thursday

No mail!

Friday

Mail

• Membership renewal notice from KPBS, the local public radio station. I suspect if I were more diligent about renewing, I wouldn’t receive reminders in the mail.

Junk

• Local advertisements brought to me by the San Diego Union-Tribune. 37 pages. I may not take their newspaper, but they still find a way to send me their advertising.

Saturday

Mail

• Time magazine.
• June 2008 issue of The Costco Connection.
• Summer coupon book for Costco. Not a lot I’m interested in this time.

Junk

• Another vote recommendation guide.
• Advertisement for Cox digital cable. Their internet service is so bad I’m considering looking for an alternative. I’m certainly not about to pay them for digital cable, with an interface much, much worse than my TiVo systems.

That leaves me with 10 pieces of mail and 6 pieces of junk. I notice that not one piece of junk mail was a credit card offer. Maybe this experiment is working?

Monday and Tuesday

Mail

• Stages magazine from Fidelity. Right on the cover, they advertise going paperless. I hope this applies to the magazine as well as their statements.
• @UCSD, a magazine for alumni.

Junk

• Solicitation for some token amount of life insurance for Mrs. sirhc, through our credit union.
• Solicitation from AMVETS to leave donations on the doorstep for them to pick up. I’m pretty sure I get one of these every month, but this is the first time I’ve ever taken the time to determine what it is.
• Solicitation from a junk removal service. They even direct me to their web site. Gee, thanks.
• PennySaver and associated circulars (15 pages, not including the PennySaver and included CouponSaver).
• Local business circulars, from RedPlum, which is apparently a company that specializes in sending circulars. 41 pages.
• LEGO catalog. As awesome as this is to flip through, I can browse their web site just as easily.
• REI catalog. Same as the LEGO catalog.

The RedPlum circulars do include the weekly specials for Sprouts and Vons, which we do frequent (we also shop at my favorite store, Trader Joe’s). Both stores have their weekly specials on their web site, so there’s no problem losing the RedPlum circulars.

Wednesday and Thursday

Mail

• Results for Mrs. sirhc’s last ultrasound. It’s a girl!
• The June issue of San Diego Westways. Part of our AAA membership.
• The June issue of Parenting. Part of a free two issue trial, which Mrs. sirhc has already canceled.

Junk

• Invitation to join the IEEE Computer Society. I’m already a member of USENIX, SAGE, and LOPSA. I suppose I could throw in IEEE and ACM as well, but I’ll first see if work will pay for it. Of all the junk mail I get, I expect the computer societies to be paperless.
• Solicitation for AT&T’s internet, phone, and TV services. Junk, but with the quality of Cox’s internet service, I’m almost tempted.
• Another voting guide to instruct me which way I should vote on the issues. With a little more than two weeks until the election, I expect a lot more of this. My mistake, apparently, was not registering as a decline-to-state voter. I’ll remedy this after the election.
• Solicitation for a United Airlines credit card. I get this about once a month, both at home and at work. I guess they think I’ll eventually break down.
• Solicitation from UCSD’s Computer Science and Engineering department to support their tutoring program. This is what I get for registering for the tutor reunion (and then not going anyway).
• Catalog for Basset, which apparently sells furniture.

Friday

Mail

• Rebate check for my cell phone.
• Rebate check for Mrs. sirhc’s cell phone.

Junk

• Pre-approval notice from our credit union that I’m eligible for an auto loan.
• Pre-approval notice from our credit union that Mrs. sirhc is eligible for an auto loan.
• Local business circulars, consisting of 45 pages.

Normally, the pre-screened offers would bother me. However, we’re actually in the market for a new car right now. Not very green of me, I know.

Saturday

Mail

• Time magazine. Including the warning about my subscription expiring. Darn.

Junk

• Something called NC Magazine. There sure are a lot of community-oriented publications where we live now.
• Get1Free magazine. A coupon book that rarely contains anything I want.
• An informative reminder that I can save on Alamo car rentals because I’m a Costco member. Um, thanks.

Ratio of mail to junk for week 2 is 8:19. More than twice as much junk than mail. It’s a good thing I recycle.

For years, people have been talking about the paperless office, an idealized concept in which all documents and communications are of the electronic variety. I don’t know about anyone else, but looking around my office, it is far from paperless. Sure, a lot of once was done on paper is now done via electronic means, but I still have more paper around my office than I’d like.

Still, the situation at my office is far better than at home. Every day I receive reams of paper in my mailbox that I do not need. Magazines (I never read and have unsubscribed from), catalogs (from which I’ve never ordered—opting instead for their web sites), weekly circulars (for stores I never shop at), credit card offers (for cards I’d never get), and bills (which I suppose I need, sort of).

In an effort to rid myself of the piles of junk I either shred or recycle every week, and save a few trees, I did two things. First, I signed up for paperless billing from all of my utilities and paperless documents from my bank and credit union. The immediate benefit of this, besides not having my mailbox filled with paper is archival. Bank statements take up room in filing drawers and that room runs out quickly. Bills just get shredded, because I have no desire for them to take up what little room isn’t being taken by bank statements. By opting for electronic delivery, I can save as many bank statements and bills as I want—for years—and it takes less space on my hard drive than my photo collection.

Second, I signed up for GreenDimes, which advertises itself as a way to stop junk mail and save the environment. Initially, I was going to sign up for the free account and use their pointers to manage the junk mail myself. Then I noticed that the $20 fee for their premium service is a one-time fee, not a subscription. So I opted for this service, to free myself of the hassle of freeing myself from junk mail. I don’t know how effective this service will be, but I’ll report back in a couple of months on the relative success or failure of it.

One thing I found odd about GreenDimes was the $1 offer. There are three options for this nominal sum: receive it as a check in the mail; use it to plant a tree on my behalf; or receive a free trial issue of Plenty, the magazine of hip, green living. I can’t help but think this is a test. The irony of the first and third options was immediately apparent to me.

I still receive periodical publications from memberships. My bank, AAA, Costco, and the Zoological Society of San Diego. Most of the time, these magazines go unread. I save some (Zoonooz) and toss the rest into the recycle bin. Still, if possible, I’d like to receive these electronically as well. A PDF file is far more environmentally-friendly, and takes up less space, than a print magazine.