Opening a mailbox is like opening a gift each day. However, instead of a nice surprise, Kiara Slater usually knows what's she's going to get, and it's not a box of goodies.
It is junk mail, and this Alabama A & M student receives her fair share of it.
She's not alone.
The average American household receives about 18 pieces of junk mail each week. If you add that up, that's about 936 pieces per year cluttering your box with things you may not be interested in.
"At first you are like, 'How do they know my address? Where do they come from?" said Slater.
But you can't question the junk in one box without questioning the junk in another - your email inbox.
"The junk in my inbox is worse. It's way worse. The junk mail, it's a fair amount. The inbox is ridiculous," said Slater.
You may not know this, but there are ways to get rid of, or at least lessen the amount of junk in both. It's a mailbox makeover and all you need is a computer and a little patience.
Kiara headed to a spot to log on to optoutprescreen.com. It is a website that allows you to opt out of pre-approved credit card offers for up to five years. It's operated by the four major credit rating companies.
It will ask for your name, address, social security number, and date of birth. However, the last two are not required.
Then it will give you a few options. Kiara chose to opt out of receiving credit card offers for five years. After that, she typed in her personal information, pressed enter, and that was it!
"If I would have known it was that easy, I would have done it a long time ago," said Slater.
The next step in her "mailbox makeover" was to tackle the junk in her email inbox. She had 1,956 spam messages.
Raymond Harrell is a PC repair technician and says there are things you can do to stop receiving so much junk in your email accounts.
"Have a couple of different email accounts. You can have everything important on one email, then you can have another more public email that you can actually give out to multiple accounts, things that you don't care if you get a lot of junk email on," said Harrell.
Harrell says never to open email from someone you don't know, and he also suggests adding a spam filter to your computer.
"You have the ones that operate through the Internet service providers, but it doesn't hurt to have an extra level of protection on your end. And it will also help keep out a lot of viruses by not opening those emails and by having that extra protection," said Harrell.
Helpful tips to help people like Kiara de-clutter her inbox and her mailbox, on the journey to making life a little less "junky."
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