Getting Rid Of Junk Mail

I'm not talking about junk email. Those are usually easy to handle, having a handy little "Unsubscribe" link in any issue. I'm talking about real junk mail. The kind that piles up in your mail box, necessitates about 80% of your paper recycling, generates tons of environmental tolls, and is just, generally, a huge pain.

This is my journey on getting rid of it. (Watch this page for continuous updates).

July 22, 2014
As I am tidying my desk of clutter, a Bed Bath & Beyond coupon I haven't thrown out yet jumps out at me. As one of the companies I get most junk mail from, I decide enough is enough. I unsubscribe the 4 different names of previous tenants I have been receiving mail for, using the URL they so conveniently provided on the coupon. From there, I easily get to the form to unsubscribe from direct mail: Bed Bath and Beyond: Unsubscribe from Direct Mail.
Thank you Bed Bath & Beyond for making this process so easy!

* Note: I know the tenant right before me was in my apartment for 4 years. I am receiving not only her junk mail but also the mail from 3 previous tenants before her. How long has this been going on?? Does this not bother people?

July 23, 2014
There are 11 new pieces of junk mail today. Normally, these go straight to the recycle container conveniently located right next to my building's mailboxes. Today, I meticulously sift through them, hoping for similarly useful information as with BB&B. Sadly, only two of them identify where I might possibly be able to get rid of them: One of the two Safeway coupons and a random home improvement brochure. The distributor is listed as RedPlum. This is their unsubscribe link: https://www.redplum.com/tools/redplum-postal-addremove.html

Some more poking around online, out of frustration for not finding other useful information on the other 9 mailings yielded this useful link:
http://stopjunkmail.org/sample/kit.pdf
I might give this a try another day - I've let junk mail consume too much of my time today already.

July 29, 2014
I'm starting to think all junk mail arrives on the same day. That makes my life easier though since I can commit to a few minutes of trying to get rid of it every week! Lots of the same stuff as last week that has no obvious way to get rid of it.

One blue Valpak envelope with a whole stack of coupons in it. This one was easy to find and stop:
http://www.coxtarget.com/mailsuppression/s/DisplayMailSuppressionForm

I found the following for Sur La Table:
If you wish to no longer receive the Sur La Table catalog, please send us an email or call our Customer Service Center at 1-800-243-0852. Our representatives are available to answer your emails or calls from 8am-midnight EST M-F and 10am-10pm EST Sat and Sun.
http://www.surlatable.com/common/custFrequentlyAskedQuestions.jsp#Cat7Quest4

Calling took less than a minute and was no hassle, contrary to what I had feared. Thanks!

For United MileagePlus mail I needed to log in to my account, but here is where I could unsubscribe from direct mail: https://www.united.com/web/en-US/apps/account/address/addressPrivacy.aspx


I also took a minute to do step 1 of the steps outlined in http://stopjunkmail.org/sample/kit.pdf:

1.  www.dmachoice.org
2. Credit Card offers
3. Sweepstakes
4. ValPak coupons (did online already!)
5. Advo / Valassis www.advo.com/consumersupport 
6. Harte Hanks direct marketing www.pennysaverusa.com/contactus
7. CatalogChoice.org

This took a step or two, since you have to register, but this ultimately it's worth the satisfaction of knowing you've been taking off the mailing list of a company that holds the key to some 3600 company's junk mail!

from www.dmachoice.org

May 12, 2015
It's pretty unclear how much my junk mail weeding has actually helped. I continued to get the same stack of local offers every Tuesday, although I do in fact no longer receive 

• Bed, Bath & Beyond
• Safeway
• Sur La Table
• United 
• Valpak

mail. Trying to restart this effort, I am trying to target the worst offender of junk mail: The weekly pack of irrelevant coupons and catalogues that seem to be delivered to every mailbox in town, every Tuesday. Thinking it might be a local thing (most ads are for local businesses), I checked out my city's website: https://www.cityofpaloalto.org/gov/depts/pwd/zerowaste/resources/junkmail.asp
They reconfirm many of the same tips as stopjunkmail.org, so I am biting the bullet and signing up for CatalogChoice.org. I have an account now, and will add businesses as I get their spam mail...

May 14, 2015
So far, my CatalogChoice experience has been a mixed bag. Unsubscribing from FrontGate was as easy as entering the information on the mailing label and done (whether or not it was effective we shall see as time goes on). However trying to unsubscribe from AAA Auto Insurance was basically impossible: They asked me to call AAA, but there was no phone number listed and I was unable to find it easily online. As for LifeLock they also required me to make a phone call, but they did list the number and calling took only a minute or two.

• FrontGate
• AAA Auto Insurance (no phone nr provided): I called Member Services at 800-922-8228 (choices 2 and 3 in the teleprompt) and asked for them to remove my address. It took about 5-10min and they said it would take 30 days to remove my address.
• LifeLock: Call 1-800-543-3562, it will take about 5 business days for the request to go in.

How to send to "undisclosed recipients" - Mozilla Thunderbird

You know those emails you sometimes get, that are not addressed specifically to you, but rather to "undisclosed recipients"? They are usually event invitations or newsletters to a wider audience, where it should not be possible to see everyone's email address for privacy reasons.

So now you need to write such an email yourself. But how to create this mysterious "undisclosed recipients" addressee, and prevent other emails to be seen?

How to go about it depends on your email client, and here we will show how it is done in Mozilla Thunderbird. It is surprisingly easy, and the answer is easily found on their support website:

If there is no entry in the To: field but only in the BCC: then the mail will be sent to all the BCC recipient(s) and the mail will be displayed to recipients as being sent to "undisclosed recipients" or similar wording by the receiving email program.

In concrete terms, this means:

1. Leave the To: line empty
2. Leave the CC: line empty
3. Put all the addresses in the BCC: line

Et voilà! That's all it takes.

Loose vs Lose

I know quite a few people now who consistently confuse the spelling of "lose" and "loose". There are tons of easy ways to remember the difference. I've compiled some of my favorites here.

from blog.writeathome.com

from zazzle.com

from grammar.about.com

As a reminder:
Loose is an adjective, meaning the opposite of tight or contained.
Lose is a verb, meaning the opposite of win or keep.

Sprüngli Luxemburgerli are gluten-free

One of the most famous and delicious treats to get from Sprüngli in Zürich, Switzerland are their Luxemburgerli.

Image from lifeovereasy.com

Having recently returned to my hometown from the States, and dealing with celiac disease in Switzerland for the first time, one of the first things I wanted to find out was whether I could still indulge in these special macaroons. Internet research yielded vague results, though it looked very much like I might be in luck:

"Die Luxemburgerli enthalten KEIN MEHL und werden in einem SEP. RAUM hergestellt, somit sind sie nicht kontaminiert." 

Translation: The Luxemburgerli contain no flour and are produced in a separate room, hence they are not contaminated.

(Zöliakie Forum Antwort #10)

"hatte eine kollegin die bei sprüngli die lehre gemacht hat und
mir bestätigt hat, dass sie gf sind und eben in einem sep. raum
hergestellt werden, da sie ja solche riessen mengen davon herstellen..."
Translation: Had a friend who did her apprenticeship at Sprüngli and confirmed that they are glutenfree and indeed are produced in a separate room, since they produce such enormous quantities of them...

(Zöliakie Forum Antwort #13)

Now these posts are both from 2007, so I didn't want to trust whether they were still accurate, and contacted Sprüngli directly. I asked not only whether the Luxemburgerli contain any ingredients that contain gluten, but also if they could confirm that they are produced in a separate facility. This is the answer I received and would like to share with anyone who shares both my love of Luxemburgerli and my inability to eat gluten.


Besten Dank für Ihre Anfrage vom 10.09.2013.

Unsere Luxemburgerli enthalten keine glutenhaltigen Zutaten.

Es ist uns aber ein Anliegen Ihnen mitzuteilen, dass wir in unserer Produktion diverse Produkte mit Mehl verarbeiten (z.B. Biskuit, Brot, Backwaren süss und salzig etc.). Unsere Produktion und die Produkte unterliegen einer strengen Hygiene- und Qualitätskontrolle, und die Produktionsräume, Arbeitsflächen und Gerätschaften werden regelmässig unter strenger Vorschrift gereinigt. Trotz dieser rigorosen Massnahmen können wir Kreuzkontaminationen nicht immer hundert prozentig ausschliessen.

Freundliche Grüsse

Ihre Confiserie Sprüngli AG

Translation:

Thank you for your inquiry of 10.09.2013.

Our Luxemburgerli contain no ingredients containing gluten.

However, we would like to let you know that in our facility we process various products with flour (e.g. biscuit dough, bread, sweet and savory baked goods, etc.). Our facility and the products are subject to strict hygiene and quality control, and the facility, working surfaces and machines are cleaned regularly under strict supervision. In spite of these rigorous measures we cannot exclude cross-contaminations with one hundred percent certainty.

Best regards,

Confiserie Sprüngli AG

Introduction

You know how every so often, we are scouring the web for solutions to a specific problem, a how-to for a specific task, or simply some information on a specific topic?

Most of the time we find our solutions, how-to's and information, but most of the time it's scattered over several websites, blog posts, wikipedia articles and forum discussions. We put our answers together ourselves, collaged together from all these different sources, and most of the time it works just the way we want it to. This is largely regardless of which field we happen to be interested in at the time, be it how to fix our mobile phone, our computer, how to cook a broccoli cheese soup, how to knit a sweater, solve a math problem, or format a document.

But do you also know how every so often, we'll want to go back to where we found those solutions, how-to's and information, but seem unable to put back together the pieces we used to make the complete picture we ended up with? We'll try going back through our browser history (but let's be honest - we know we'll never find it among all the pages and pages of facebook pics we've been clicking through), we'll try searching the same search words over again, but somehow none of that ever really seems to work.

This has happened to me so many times over the years, that I felt it was time to start a collection of my collaged answers for my own personal reference, including of course the links to where I put them together from. This blog is meant to be that collection.

I know it will be useful to me, and I hope you find it useful as well.