(If you missed the first part of this organizational article, click here.)
If you love Eddie Bauer, then go ahead and keep the latest catalog and recycle the rest. when a new catalog comes in from that company, then recycle the old one. Be careful of specialty catalogs that contain the same merchandise in a different layout. For example, I recently got two different catalogs by the same company in the mail. One was the regular catalog and one was a slimmer version that focused on kids items. guess what? The regular catalog had all of the kids merchandise in it anyway, in the back of the book.
The Remove Me pile is for any catalogs that you can live without. This pile requires a little extra work. Tear off the back cover or inside mail order form and place it in the Remove Me pile. Then recycle the rest of the catalog. You’ll have the information you need to contact the catalog company and asked to be removed from the list. Why continue getting pet gear catalogs when you don’t own a pet? Or farm equipment catalogs just because you once bought some flower bulbs from a related company? By getting off the list, you’ll save your home from clutter and a few trees as well. Believe me, if you ever want to get back on the list, it will be very easy to do.
Finally, you can remove the piles. Recycling gets recycled, the Remove Me pile gets removed and the Keep catalogs get put away in a place of honor. We keep an end table drawer for this purpose, but you can also find a bookshelf or a pretty basket to hold them all. You can still browse and shop but without all of the clutter.
And as for the kids art projects, they can always pull one out of the recycling pile or wait a day for a new one to show up in the mail.