Fight catalog overkill with online help

Now that the holiday season is over, check out the pile of catalogs you received. If you're like my wife and me, you'll have a stack high enough to reconstitute a fair-sized tree. Since I do all my browsing online, these are nothing more than an annoyance and a waste of resources. But what's a guy to do, short of calling the vendors one by one to request deletion from their databases?

I took advantage of Catalog Choice. This online service of the not-for-profit organization, Ecology Center offers a one-stop solution to catalog proliferation. After registering, I was presented with a list of more than one hundred popular catalogs, from which I could choose the ones I currently receive but don't wish to. Once I selected those to decline, Catalog Choice took over the work of contacting them for me. Very easy. Goodbye, J.C. Penney! Adios, Dell!

To assure the best chance of success in canceling a catalog via Catalog Choice, have at hand copies of the catalogs so you can enter the exact name and customer i.d. number the catalog uses to identify you. My handwriting is so poor I've ended up on innumerable mailing lists with permutations of my name that defy belief.