How to junk your junk mail

One of the most useful sites my wife and I have found for urban living is Apartment Therapy, which contains oodles of tips for maximizing your cramped space. Occasionally the site runs a series of "cures," which are step-by-step instructions for de-cluttering and renewing a specific space in your home. The current cure deals with entryways, which are always tricky for apartment living. With so little space for things like shoes and coats, it's easy for your entryway to become cramped and crowded. That's not what you want to see when you first open the door after work. Your home should be an oasis. One of the biggest things that will clutter up your entryway is junk mail. It's so easy to drop it there and then forget about it. Sorting, recycling, shredding -- who needs that? So instead you get a big pile of garbage right inside your front door. What if you could stop getting junk mail entirely? Not only would it make your life easier by giving you one less thing to deal with, but it would also be good for the planet, since so many trees are cut down to produce all that paper (100 million per year, says the site). Apartment Therapy recommends a few different sites where you can have your name taken off these annoying mailing lists. OptOutPrescreen will cut down on unsolicited credit card offers. The Do Not Mail Registry reduces catalogs, non-profit mailings, and other advertisements. Catalog Choice lets you opt out of specific catalogs that you don't want. Finally, Tonic Mailstopper is a fee-based service that promises to cut off junk mail entirely. For more details, visit Apartment Therapy's fall cure page.