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The United States Post Office contains a huge secret, one that made me giddy with power when I found out about it. Buried deep within the Domestic Mail Manual is Postal Form 1500; Prohibitory order against sender of pandering advertisement in the mails, which is available as a PDF Download.

Originally intended to stop “pandering advertising”, it has been widened to allow a consumer to “prohibit the mailing of a dry goods catalog because he objects to the contents or indeed the text of the language touting the merchandise” according to the 1970 U.S. Supreme Court decision in ROWAN v. U. S. POST OFFICE DEPT. , 397 U.S. 728 (1970) which concerned the application of U.S. 39, IV, 30, 3008.

If you decide to fill out this form and take it to your local post office, you must submit the opened piece of mail that you are objecting to along with the form. The postal clerk will probably balk at taking it from you, being unable to see the “erotically arousing or sexually provocative matter” in a Land’s End catalog or supermarket circular.

You can help him out by mentioning that Postal Bulletin 21977 on page 13 states:

Postmasters may not refuse to accept a Form 1500 because the advertisement in question does not appear to be sexually oriented. Only the addressee may make that determination.

or you could print it out and take it with you, but the easiest way to do the whole thing is to mail the form, and the opened mailing you object to receiving to:

So, go wild. Print out the PDF as many times as advertisers send you unwanted junk, mail it all in, and start simplifying your mailbox!