A bundle of junk mail sticking out of a letter box

Episode 3 – How to stop junk mail coming through your door

How can we stop junk mail coming through our door every day? It's relentless and just adds to the clutter in our homes. Day after day we have post coming through our doors and lots of it is junk mail. Since paper is such a big problem for many people, we are talking about how to stop junk mail from coming into your home in the first place.

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Transcript of this podcast episode

0:07  
Welcome to today's episode of The declutter hub podcast, your channel for super easy, no nonsense advice on how to declutter and organise your home. Please welcome your host professional organisers, Ingrid Jansen, and Lesley Spellman.

0:29  
Hello, and welcome listeners to episode three of the declutter hub podcast.

0:33  
I'm Ingrid. And I'm Leslie, if you have clutter and want to sort it out, this is the podcast show for you. In today's episode, we're talking all about posts that comes through your door every day, and in particular on how to keep it under control. Because we know from experience that paperwork is a huge contributor to clutter problems in the home. And we really want to talk to you about how to stop this junk mail from coming in. Now, I don't know about you, Lesley, but I get tonnes of junk mail. So what what kind of stuff comes through your door because I have a whole long list of junk mail?

Yeah, I think it's interesting, really, isn't it? Because junk mail is going to be different things to different people, isn't it? You know, what's jumped to one person is not to another so but you know, it's gonna be like you take away delivery free newspapers for some people this charity bags. Yeah, charity bags are so many things isn't

1:23  
addressed mail, you know, to occupy? Yeah, yeah, carts for window cleaning or clothing catalogues, I mean, tonnes and tonnes of stuff comes through your door all the time. And I think today, we are going to talk about all the different ways on what we can do to prevent all this stuff coming in. Because of course, if it comes, doesn't come in, we don't have to deal with it. So we're kind of we're working ahead of ourselves, instead of just constantly trying to put stuff in a recycling bin, and we're going to go no, wait a minute, what can we do to prevent this clutter from coming in our homes in the first place? So when I was thinking about this podcast, the first thing that came to mind was actually to put a no junk mail sticker on my postbox and I have one.

2:09  
Well, I don't have one. Oh, yeah, I don't know, I've always been a bit strange about the stickers. I know they, a lot of people use them and have great results with them. But for me, it's not something that I'd really want to put on my front door. For some reason. I don't know why. But having said that, I did research it. And actually, there is a great campaign in the UK called The stop junk mail campaign. And it's actually funded. So it's kind of an effort and initiative to control paper waste. So they've realised that all this junk mails coming into all of our homes, and for the most part, we don't really want it. So it's all about control in paper waste. And that initiative is funded by the purchase of stickers. So they charge about 85 pounds a sticker, which is very inexpensive, I guess. But there's loads and loads of different styles of stickers so you can get no junk mail, no free newspapers, no leaflets, addressed mail only no circulars, no charity bags, even no cold callers. But obviously, we're not trying to declutter people of our doorsteps, only post at the moment. Or you can, you can also shake things up a little bit. And you can decide to, to say that you do want free newspapers, but you don't want any other junk mail, because I don't know about you, but I quite like my free newspapers coming through, because they're the kind of that's where I get my local gossip and see pictures of people do nice things.

3:26  
I used to get a local newspaper, but for some reason, I think we're off the road because we don't get them anymore. But for me, I realised I can do without it. But I could if I want to pick up a local copy to local shop, I've got an option to get it if I want to. But I think for me, having a sticker really helps me. And I know, I've got a label maker. And I created the label with my label maker. But you could also just use a white sticker that you may be used on an envelope or something to just write no junk mail if it really, really bothers you. That's the thing. I think the first step into trying to control this junk mail, but it's great to hear that are so many different stickers available. So if you do want your local newspaper, but you don't want leaflets, there are different stickers you can buy. So listeners, why don't you ever think through if what kind of sticker would work for you? And if you actually can take action and buy the sticker and then you're also supporting the campaign. But you're also preventing stuff from coming in in the first place. So are there any other options Lesley to tackle this problem?

4:31  
Yeah, so actually, you can you can download a form directly from Royal Mail, which is quite interesting to get Royal Mail to stop delivering junk mail to your address. Okay, the form that you go in, that you download online. And apparently it takes about six weeks to stop getting unaddressed junk mail to your home. So Royal Mail. I mean, it's striking right at the heart of it really aren't we if we're going to the Royal Mail and getting that getting them to stop it coming in. So I think that's a really good idea. idea as well, it's called the Royal Mail door to door opt out.

5:03  
Okay, well, that's really helpful as well. And I mean, downloading a form is not a difficult task to do either. But you save yourself lots of time later by taking this action. So that's really good. So are we do we have any other options?

5:19  
Yeah, there's something called a mailing Preference Service. So basically, lots of people's I mean, we've we've kind of learned a little bit about this over the last few months with GDPR in the year when we've opted out of a lot of electronic communication and things like that. But the mailing Preference Service is more of a paper based system to unsubscribe to things. So basically, you say to the mailing Preference Service, I don't want my name and my address being given or being sold to various lists, I don't want direct marketing material. And then every time somebody because people buy lists from various places have information on you. But what they have to do legally is I have to cross reference that mailing list, which has got names and addresses on it with a mailing Preference Service list. And if it appear, if your name and address appears on the mailing Preference Service, in principle, it can't be used. And so that's going to take a little bit of time, because as you can imagine, it's, it'll take a while for these list to get created of the site sending material out. So the same, it might take four to six months before you actually get any of that information to start coming through. But that's the mailing Preference Service. And what you do is you register online at the MPs website. We'll put that all of this information in the show notes, I think, yeah. So yeah, it can take the same, you know, a good four to six months before it stops coming through. And I think also you can also register previous

6:50  
occupier occupied. Yes,

6:51  
the word I was looking for previous occupies that your address can get registered. Uh, but also you have to put everybody's name who's in your family, if you want the junk mail to stop going to them? I think that mail in Preference Service is really going to work. And that's been around for quite a few years. I think. So I think that's an important one. So I'm gonna I'm definitely going to do that this weekend. Okay.

7:09  
And, also, is there anything we can do about all these charity bags? I mean, no, I've got no problems at all with bringing stuff to charity. But when I get like a charity bag, and it says fill it up and put it outside on a certain date, I just, I don't feel comfortable doing it for some other reason. I'd rather bring things that I think and go to another home directly to the charity shop, I just don't feel comfortable leaving a bag outside my home with stuff in it. And then you know, the back can be ripped open, and it can be scattered all over. It just doesn't feel right to me. Yeah. But we also get other letters and things from charities. So is there anything we can do about that?

7:56  
Yeah, I mean, I agree with you with the charity bags, it's something about taking the choice away, isn't it and wanting to donate directly to the charity of your choice, and I would rather take it to a shop, I mean, you know, often hopefully, we have more than one bag of charity stuff to send anywhere times, which would be helpful in the decluttering journey. But ya know, I think it's really important for us to stop getting those charity bags through the door if we don't want them because you know, that's the single use plastic, we're all looking at that at the moment. And that needs to needs to go Yeah, so there is something to stop charity marketing mail coming through your door, which is called the fundraising Preference Service. A little bit more complicated and long winded, I think then the mail Preference Service. But if you want to stop getting marketing mail from a charity registered in England, Wales or Northern Ireland, you can say, this is the charity, this is the charity registration number. I don't want any more mail from this charity, and that will stop the fundraising letters that we've talked about, and potentially then the charity bags as well from being put through your door. And apparently, they're going to then remove your contact details within 28 days. There's also a separate one that you go to for Scotland, the Scottish fundraiser.

9:10  
For me, I mean, I love donating a time and money to charity. But I think when somebody select a charity that our model even have heard of sends me a letter and says I would you I would like you to support us and we'd like but but oh, you know, what does that come from? So I think that's really it might take a bit more effort listeners. But if you feel that you rather want to focus your your your time or your money on one or two certain charities, maybe this is one way of also making sure that that kind of junk mail doesn't come through your door. Now, there's also something about the open register and the electoral roll. Have you got any more information about that? Lesley?

9:50  
Yeah, when you? You know, the thing that comes through every year where it says who lives at your address and who's over 16 And is it details still correct and normally you can either There's either a phone number that you call or you can do it online to confirm the details on there, there's an option for open and closed register. Now, the open register means that your as it might suggest, your details are open to, I don't know, marketeers, I guess, and that they can then buy and use your information on there. So what you can do is you just need to make sure if you don't want that junk mail coming through via via the electoral roll listings, that you need to put yourself on the closed register and not on the open register. Okay, so that's something you know that I guess you need to wait until the next. Maybe you can do it. Now, I'm not sure. But, you know, the electoral roll, things come through quite regularly. Anyway. So yeah,

10:43  
and I mean, the good thing is now you can do a lot of this online as well, you don't have to then fill in forms and send it back. So you kind of make itself a lot easier for yourself as well. I think. Another thing which you can do is when I, I've lived in my house for 10 years now, and I sometimes still get letters from the previous owners. And a see a lot of times that people say Oh, I'm just going to put it in the recycling box. But I think you're just moving the problem to recycling. So what I always do, I don't know if you do this as well, but I write on the envelope, Return to Sender. And there's almost always an address on the back where it needs to where you can see that it needs to be returned to and then also I read something like does no longer live at this property, so they can then take them off the mailing list. So instead of just collecting post all the time, I actually take those 20 seconds that it takes to get a pen and to write return to send them put it back in the mailbox to make sure it doesn't keep coming in all the time. So that's also a way I think of trying to stop posts from coming in you actually don't want

11:50  
yeah, definitely. And I think that links back to what we were talking about before from the mail preference service where you can register a previous owner of the property and yeah, details taken off your address. Yeah, I mean, talking about contacting the senders directly. If you've got, you know, even if it's mail, it's addressed to you, but you don't want information from that sender directly. What you need to do is you need to use a sentence, which somehow makes it I think, a bit more legalese. Please stop processing my personal data for direct marketing purposes in accordance with the Data Protection Act 1990 8am. I presume that's still relevant, the 1998 Data Protection Act, but I'm not sure whether it's changed with GDPR. But I'm not sure. But somebody can double check that maybe we'll check that before we put it in the show notes. And then you have to tell them a reasonable date that you want the organisation to stop sending you mail. So what they're suggesting on here is that a month is a reasonable amount of time for them to, you know, go through the process of taking you off their off their list.

12:48  
Yeah, I think you know, I mean, you can't expect these things to happen overnight. You know, it takes time to, for other people to put your information into databases and take you off lists. And so it's not a quick fix, maybe apart from only the no junk mail sticker, because then at least you won't get your, your leaflets and your takeaway menus and all of those things. But the other things will take a bit of time. But on the longer term, it will can be really beneficial in things that come through your door. And I think that's why our listeners, we really wanted to talk to you about this today, to give you some prevention techniques here as well. So instead of having to constantly deal with things to prevent it even from coming in,

13:33  
yeah, I think it's really I think it's really important from an environmental perspective as well, you know, all this paper is getting produced on Yeah, put through your doors, and it's going straight into recycling, if we can just take out that middle step. And that's going to be helpful. Yeah. And it is quite annoying, isn't it? You know, and you get so much junk mail every day. And what we see quite often is we see that junk mail, it just sort of sits in the hall or it sits in a porch and things like that, because people don't want to deal with it. And so it's really important to take that out. So it's kind of getting it at source really rather than having to deal with it in the house. So yeah, no, I find it quite interesting to know that actually, there are companies and organisations that are trying to get on top of this. So that'd be useful to share with the listeners. So definitely.

14:13  
Yeah, absolutely. And so listeners, we hope you've enjoyed this podcast. And that's it for this episode. We hope you've enjoyed listening, and you are also inspired to take action. So why don't you set aside one hour this weekend and download the Royal Mail Form, decide if you want to order a sticker for your mailbox, and check out the stop junk mail campaign. All the information like we said will be in the show notes. And of course another thing you can do is unsubscribe from paper catalogues by going into your account settings and untick the box that you want to receive things by post. We really would like all our listeners to start working on these prevention techniques because you will not see results overnight. But longer term you will really really benefit from doing this task and like we said saving The planet as well, which is a good thing. So thanks for taking the time to listen today. If you'd like to get more tips and advice follow us on social media. And if you don't want to miss the next episode, subscribe to the declutter hub podcast. See you next time.

15:17  
Thanks for listening to this week's episode of the declutter hub podcast. Check out declutter hub.com For more inspiration, and don't forget to tune in next week.

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Andie HelpMeTidy says:

8 August 2020 at 8:48 PM

This podcast was full of great tips to stop junk mail at source. Thanks to Ingrid and Lesley, I'm now proudly displaying a 'No Junk Mail' Sticker on my letterbox and have sent my 'No thank you' form off to Royal Mail. We all like to do our bit to save waste and I will be sure to share all these tips with my clients – thanks ladies for sharing!

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1. Lesley Spellman says:
  
  9 August 2020 at 8:49 PM
  
  Thanks for you feedback, And. So glad it’s helpful to you. Do share our podcast with your clients too. Good luck!
  
  Reply

Episode 3 – How to stop junk mail coming through your door

Episode 236 – How to start decluttering your paperwork

Episode 219 – 10 things organised people do

Episode 188 – Tackle Your Piles of Papers Today

Episode 144 – Guest interview with Declutter Hub member Emma

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