Just occasionally I feel like researching something to the Nth degree, gathering some stats, working it all out. Sometimes it’s useful; sometimes it’s really not. This probably falls into the latter camp.

Some may recall one day in December 2005 when I got 28 pieces of junk mail in my mailbox on a single day. (As it happens that post was noticed by a Sunday Herald-Sun journalist, who ended up doing an article — including a photo — though it never got printed.)

Last month I decided to do a survey of junk mail in the Christmas period. I tracked everything that came in during December.

The result? A grand total of 100 for the month.

Unlike last year, the peak was 12 on the 2nd of December.

Last of the Christmas brochures arrived on the 19th of December. Boxing Day sales ones started appearing on 23rd of December.

A number of vendors sent multiple brochures over the month:
Coles: 6
Safeway: 5
IGA, Big W, Target, Target Country: 4
K-Mart, Officeworks and Triple8 Cleaning: 3

The most notable? A brochure that externally looked like something for a local charity (with text referring to “sleeping rough” and the like), but which turned out to be for bedding retailer (Captain) Snooze. I know it got mentioned on talkback radio; I wouldn’t be surprised if there were complaints about it.

So there we go — that was junk mail in December. Fascinating, huh?

My next conundrum is: given I only read a fraction of it, should I get a No Junk Mail sticker? (If only one could nominate those one wanted to receive…)