At Last! A Break From Holiday Shopping Ads

With the Christmas buying frenzy over, my email inbox (and my snail mail box, as well) is back to normal.

For about a month, I was flooded with offers and sales and “free shipping” and “last chance to buy” and, well, you all know what I mean.

Tonight, I noticed how my incoming email had shrunk to about half the number I received daily this past month. It was such a relief. I became very good at skimming/scanning the subject lines. I would start at the top of my list of emails, select the top one, immediately go to the bottom and hit Ctl-Shift (selecting all in the window) and simply un-selecting the ones that really were personal emails. Usually that was just one out of about a dozen. My Trash or Deleted folders were always stuffed and I emptied them almost every night.

Now I can actually just select a few on each list to delete (or toss into Spam), by hand.

As for snail mail, I can actually reach into my box and gently slide out my mail (except on food ad days, but I really want those!). During the height of the season, I almost needed the jaws-of-life to pull out all my mail.

Now I do admit to being a catalog shopper. I hate shopping at a brick-and-mortar store. Even when I grocery shop, I take a list, get what I need, and leave. But I do not need a new catalog every week from the same firm. So I am relieved to note that my snail mail has once again, also, gone back to normal.

The problem I worry over is that I used to look forward to 11 months of normalcy in both email and snail mails regarding the year-end shopping season. But these days, it begins earlier and earlier. I shudder to think about what the start-date will be for the 2015 Christmas shopping season - I hope they wait until after Labor Day, at least.