Stop Junk Mail With the MailStopper Service

[Note:  This post has been updated with the recent announcement that GreenDimes has gone through a name change to Tonic MailStopper.  Here's part of the text from their email announcement:  "Today, we are officially changing the name of GreenDimes to Tonic MailStopper. Nothing else about your service has changed – same company, same service- just under the MailStopper name. When you go to greendimes.com, you’ll be redirected to mailstopper.tonic.com – and other than a new logo, you’ll hardly notice the difference."]

Wouldn’t it be nice to stop junk mail?  Tired of filling up your paper recycling with useless junk mail?  Worried about prescreened credit card offers getting into the wrong hands?

Now you can stop junk mail from ever being delivered to your mail box using a service like MailStopper.  By registering for the service for $20 a year, MailStopper claims to reduce your junk mail by 90%.  The service easily guides you through the steps to removing your name from the major marketing companies that supply thousands of companies.  You will be directed to some web sites to fill out a form requesting your removal.  For those companies that don’t offer the web site removal tool, MailStopper lets you print out a letter for you to sign and send in the mail.

http://mailstopper.tonic.com/

I had signed up in November of 2008, but I procrastinated.  I looked at the list and was not enthused about working through it.  Today, I finally decided to get it done and was pleasantly surprised how quickly it went.  I was done in 20 to 30 minutes.  I whipped through the web site removal tools and printed out the letters.  The only thing I didn’t like had nothing to do with MailStopper;  DMA Choice required me to register on their site and create a password.

Now, the question is this:  how well will it work?  How much mail will I receive that isn’t covered by these mailing lists?  MailStopper suggests waiting for 90 days for all of the removals to be in effect.  So, I’m setting a reminder in my online planner to post the results I find on this web site.

I should also note that you can stop credit card offers through www.optoutprescreen.com.  I completed my registration last year and have been extremely happy with the service.  We were getting offers almost on a daily basis, and we now get one every month or two.  Excellent results!

Todd

Electricity Usage Continues to Decline at Home

Reducing Electricity Usage – A Reason to Celebrate

I recently received my latest utility bill from AmerenCILCO and found that my electricity usage continues to decline.  For the 7th consecutive month, my killowatt-hours used have declined compared to the same month of the previous year.  See the chart below for the data of total kilowatt-hours used by billing period month by month.

Bill Date	2007 Total KWH	2008 Total KWH	Difference
8/12/08	1338.0	1282.0	-56
9/11/08	1755.0	955.0	-800
10/10/08	1256.0	673.0	-583
11/10/08	923.0	494.0	-429
12/11/08	731.0	690.0	-41
1/14/08	1170.0	858.0	-312
2/12/09	1026.0	691.0	-335
	8199	5643	-2556

If you simply divide the 2008 usage by the 2007 usage over the same period, that is about a 31% drop in energy usage.

Ameren provides the amount of electric KWH usage by day.

Bill Date	2007 KWH – Usage Per Day	2008 KWH – Usage Per Day	Difference
8/12/08	47.7	44.2	-3.5
9/11/08	53.1	29.8	-23.3
10/10/08	46.5	23.2	-23.3
11/10/08	29.7	17.0	-12.7
12/11/08	22.8	20.9	-1.9
1/14/08	33.4	25.2	-8.2
2/12/09	34.2	23.8	-10.4

Accounting for the reduction

My wife and I were discussing exactly what the difference was between 2008 and 2007 to account for the reduction.

• Was is the thermostat settings? In 2007, we were already adjusting our thermostat to 68 degrees in the winter and 74 degrees in the summer.  While we may have been more consistent in keeping the thermostat changed, I doubt that would account for a large portion of the reduction.
• Did the weather impact the use of the furnace? Ameren reports the average temperature on the utility bills.  There were certainly month to month differences in average temperature by as much as 6 degrees either direction.  For example, a temperate September in 2008 was 70 degrees when it was 76 in 2007.  However, the last 3 months of the winter have been consistently colder than last year, so the use of the HVAC would have been heavier.  So, I can’t account for temperature.
• What about the phantom load? We have done a better job at turing off the power strip on the television entertainment center at night, so there will be a bit of savings there.
• Lighting the way with CFLs. We believe the biggest difference has to come from lighting.  The conversion to energy efficient lighting has been a work in progress.  However, in the middle of 2008 I had reached a point when nearly every light fixture in the house had a CFL installed.  The only fixture that hasn’t changed yet is the dining room ceiling fixture that requires dimmible, candle-shaped CFLs which are pricey at the moment.

Certainly, all of these steps have made an impact on reducing my energy usage, my ecological footprint, and the finincial impact on my wallet.  I am happy to see tangible results of going green.  It will be interesting to see if I can keep dropping my electricity usage this year.  I am getting to the point where I have picked all of the low hanging fruit, and further improvements will be more cost intensive such as insulating my attic and installing timers on certain light switches.