Tis The Season to Unsubscribe!
by Katy on November 26, 2024 · 21 comments
My email inbox is clogging up fast with black Friday deals to “Upgrade your sheets today” and “Lights, camera, black Friday action!” I made a decision in 2006 to stop buying new and haven’t looked back. Buying used saves money, keeps perfectly good items out of the landfill and is simply the most sustainable choice.
However, this influx of Black! Friday! Deals! gives me the perfect opportunity to scroll to the very bottom of each and every email and click “unsubscribe!” It’s like all the retailers are lining up to make it convenient for me to banish them from my life. Cool, thanks!
So as we usher in the holiday season, let this be an opportunity to unsubscribe from the advertisements that only serve to clutter your life and empty your wallet.
Unsubscribe. Do it!
Katy Wolk-Stanley
“Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without.”
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{ 21 comments… read them below or add one }
I had to chuckle because unsubscribing was something I have been doing too. I feel like I am being bombarded by multiple announcements of sales and offers.
Generationally I am in “unload” mode and am trying to find good homes for my treasures or donate them. The holidays can be such a financial fiasco. I am past buying gifts because I need to give someone something to unwrap. It’s consumables, gift cards and cash these days. Ot regifting.
Thank you for frequently posting lately – you help me stay sane. Smile
And posting frequebtly is helping to keep me sane! Somewhat, it’s subjective.
It’s so cathartic to free yourself from excess stuff — it literally creates more circulating air to take that deep breath.
Ditto to everything you said.
I need to sort through my credit card preferences to determine which emails I can unsubscribe from. Things relating to my actual use–yes. “Offers” to buy hotel points, take vacations, lower my interest rate (which is irrelevant since I pay the balance in full every month), use payment plans (ditto)– those are just clutter.
Inspired by the recent post about what we live without, specifically someone’s comment about not having television to not see advertising, I spent a while contemplating TV ads. I can’t remember the last time I bought something because I saw it on TV. Perhaps when I was a child I wanted a few toys. But as an adult, my spending patterns are so set that appeals for cars, jewelry, electronics, department stores, restaurants, beer, or cleaning products don’t tempt me. Because of our age, the shows we watch are heavily sponsored by health and life insurance, drugs and disease scares, charities, and car protection, all unnecessary. Our habit is to hit the mute button during commercials or fast-forward something on the DVR. The only advertising that is “effective” is sometimes I see a commercial for another show I might want to watch.
Similarly, I do not notice advertisements on webpages or streaming service programs, as I have trained myself to look beyond or beside them or click them off without processing them. A non-consumer is a non-consumer!
I’ve been unsubscribing like crazy. It’s especially satisfying to ping the ones that I already unsubscribed to earlier in the year. That would still be a nope, dudes.
Ha! One of my resolutions this year was to unsubscribe from 5 emails a week. I thought I would run out of things to unsubscribe from, but it almost seems like they have increased faster than I can get rid of them!! I have never been very persuaded by advertising, not because I am superior but because of my background. We did not have a television when I was growing up, plus we didn’t speak English so would not have understood them anyway. I went to a Lithuanian high school where English was seldom heard, and the nuns only allowed one hour of TV a day and that was the evening news. When I went to college and grad school I didn’t have the money for a tv nor did most students, and then I came home after grad school I lived for some time in villages with no tv reception and only one store in the entire village, a grocery store. If you wanted to shop you took a plane to Anchorage or Fairbanks. By the time I saw TV regularly, my unfashionable self was too established to change much. Not that I didn’t try, but it was much harder than it is now to be a 6’1″ girl with size 12 feet. I got my first “stylish” boots at a NYC store catering to transvestites. They hurt too much and made me 6’4″ so they were not worn more than a few times. Plus I was too uncoordinated for heels anyway. I can trip and fall in my bare feet.
I’m fascinated by your life, Lindsey! If I may, where was the Lithuanian high school? Not in Alaska, I assume?
It was a boarding school in Connecticut. All of our parents were refugees and once that cohort grew too old to have children, the number of kids slowly got smaller so the place eventually closed.
Hi Lindsey, You may not see this or may feel it’s T.M.I to share publicly. My mother’s family was displaced by WWII. Her step dad was Lithuanian and they were sponsored by the Tolstoy Foundation and sent to West Nyack, NY
Was your Dad’s family sponsored by the Tolstoy Foundation? Asking because Connecticut is close to NY.
No, they were sponsored by a family. The sponsor had to promise that they would help the refugees find jobs and ensure that they never used welfare or food stamp services.
Yes to unsubscribing!! It’s like you’re my twin. I recently signed up for a store’s messages for a discount this week. This morning they send me two messages a few hours apart asking if they could “ assist” me since they could see me browsing . ICK…immediate unsubscribe.
(1) A friend is coordinating goody bags for a group party a family member will attend. I mentioned the items that would not be used from this bag ( saves them purchasing and me trying to dispose of)in a polite and respectful way. I said I was fine if they were not included since there were other items that would be enjoyed.
My friend coordinating acknowledged the information and thanked me. Shortly after a few other people messaged and also respectfully said they would not use the items. The organizer was totally good with their there are so many food allergies .
(2) Deconstructed a Shrimp Taco Meal from Costco. The shrimp gets cooked and everything else combines to create different meals, not tacos.
(3) One of those items was the chopped onion, tomato and cilantro topping. I edited the cilantro and used the onion and tomatoes as a base for tonight’s salads.
(4) In my purge today I offered the woman who works with me a tooled leather purse( the vintage kind with a western theme). It was brand new, I had used it as a decoration piece. Wow she was thrilled. It looked awesome next to her coat.
I mentioned I would try an Advent countdown where I would offer her items everyday.
(5) Received an amaryllis bulb from a friend. I’ve always wanted to try sprouting one and couldn’t find them at Costco yet. How wonderful to have been gifted one.
Your #4 – “I mentioned I would try an Advent countdown where I would offer her items everyday.” made me literally laugh out loud. Brilliant!
I’ve been unsubscribing (and need to do so for better half too) as I’m tired of emails from a place from where I purchased an item. As I’ve stated before, 2nd hand is a challenge in this area for the few things we do buy. I do keep emails for pet food supplier and shows coming to my area. Some emails go away immediately, some take a while. Mailing list for catalogs – eh, I will give them a catalog or two. But emails are different. I don’t care if you’ve loaded them to drop on a certain date. You should be able to remove – takes a minimal amount of programming. Which is also why I dug in my heels until not being on auto pay cost me more money. Lazy and greedy companies send a file for the month “and we can’t stop your payment even though you’ve canceled/changed”. Again, calling major BS – went through this before (we moved) – and to add insult to injury, got a “late notice” to boot. Waiting almost two months for $100 did not impact me financially but it would be a hardship for some folks. Perhaps dropping a note to not-my-state-reps is in order. My state reps are worthless unless you count the sparse automated response as worthy.
I don’t have an unmanageable number of subscriptions, but there are a few I’d definitely like to get rid of. So unsubscribing from those is a good idea.
And I’d like to add my annual reminder that donations to charities are another excellent alternative gift idea. Now more than ever, a lot of worthy causes are going to need us. (Of course, the emails for those can get annoying too, especially as New Year’s Eve approaches. But I don’t mind those emails so much.)
I do allow charities to send emails in lieu of snail mail since it is better for the environment. I have started donating through Charity Navigator and you can ask that they not pass along your name, address, nor email. If I were a Rockefeller I’d have a charitable foundation or at least a Donor Advised Fund.
I unsubscribe to organizations every week and sometimes they ignore the request which means I will never spend another dime with them. It kills me how they think bombarding you multiple times a day will change your mind in a positive way. It has been very freeing to not receive a print newspaper the past several years. I believe they charge you extra for editions with lots of ads like on Black Friday. We also stream only non-ad shows because we don’t want to waste time.
This is a great reminder to unsubscribe from snail mail lists- especially Viking cruise. We took a cruise a year ago and it in unbelievable to crap they mail out. I haven’t done it because they hook me with “promotional” code. But I will just say NO!!!
I have unsubscribed from the drugstore where we get our prescriptions at least FOUR times now and the emails are still coming.
I have no idea why or how, but about six months ago I started getting all kinds of politically conservative emails, ads for Trump golden this or that, emails from Trump himself, on and on. I unsubbed. And unsubbed.
The only way I stopped them was threatening to report them to the FTC for violating the CAN-SPAM Act. Then they stopped.
LOVE to hit that “unsubscribe” button. One thing I am doing, though, is resubscribing to the streaming channels I use-at Black Friday prices. Cutting up to 90% on the cost of something I use {vs full price} just makes sense.
I’ll be going over our subscriptions to cut some and reup the rest at Black Friday prices this weekend.
Search “unsubscribe” in your email, sort alpabetically and you can get through many many companies and get deletions done quickly.