Monday, January 12, 2009

A Paper Free Life

It can be done and I know we are not the first.

Our goal is to achieve an empty mailbox.

A year ago, we read about the website Catalogchoice.org. We signed up and stopped all the unwanted catalogues from entering our lives. It takes some doing. I have blogged about it before. Basically, you collect your catalogues that are streaming, unwanted, into your life and you go to this web site and put in your exact name as it appears on the catalogue, which catalogue it is, and click BYE-BYE!

We now only get about two catalogues, the ones we want.

Please do it. It’s not too hard. Just collect those catalogues and put them in a pile—and one relaxing day, jump online and KILL THOSE PUPPIES!

Cancel your newspaper subscription and read the New York Times online.

Next, and it costs a bit but is worth it, you can sign up for electronic payments for all your bills. It costs 9.95 per month at Wells Fargo, truly more expensive than checkbooks and stamps, but worth it. Pay all your bills online and opt for Ebills for any vendor they have listed.

Log onto your phone bills and internet bills and choose the paperless option.

You can get all your credit card statements and bank statements online. Just go to the websites of your bank and your credit cards. It takes just a minute. Sign in and opt out of paper statements. You will receive statements by email.

Almost all corporations have this option. It saves them money so they make it pretty easy for you to do.

Make your email inbox your mailbox. Make a folder called “Bills” or “Accounting” or “Money” or whatever and as the emails come in, just throw them into the folder. And instead of that weekly or biweekly or monthly stack of mess you usually have laying about the house that you have to attend to, just go to your Money folder and pay those things, reconcile those things, get that stuff done. WITHOUT KILLING ONE SINGLE OXYGEN GIVING TREE!

Then, just save these digital bills and statements in a folder for the year. And file. Done. No bulky paper all over your house and no paper production waste in your streams.

Come on. You know you want to. Obama Commands It!

Happy new epoch, everyone. Get online with the big green retooling.

Another way to help out the earth: Tell your boss you are working from home one day each week. If everyone does this, it would unclog the streets by 20%! Decrease automobile effluent by 20%! This is huge. Try it. And if your boss balks, then offer to work only four days each week for only four day’s pay. Could keep unemployment down.

And on your first four day week, with your extra free day, do something completely enjoyable.

The second week on your day off, KILL ALL THAT PAPER!

You know you want to.

2 comments:

Cheryl said...

Bank of America lets you pay your bills online for free. Just sayin'.

Oh, and if you figure out how to get the mail carrier to stop leaving those grocery store ads, let me know!

Todd HellsKitchen said...

Could you speak to the Mayor about my working from home a day a week??? I'm all FOR it.... Unfortunately newspapers are folding all over the country because people aren't subscribing... It's a waste of resources, I know... But I love the paper the old fashioned way!