Junk mail. I love to hate it. Responsible for the harvesting of lots of trees each year and the contribution of lots of junk to our landfills, it's a hazard to the nation's environmental health. It's also a hazard to our collective mental health. With traffic jams, computer glitches, and other daily hassles, we have enough daily stressors to keep us on our toes. The accumulation of little stressors can send people over the deep end -- and junk mail is just such a stressor. When our mail boxes are full of bills and junk mail and nothing else because everyone who cares about us either calls or emails rather than sending snail mail, going to the mail box is a deeply unrewarding, annoying experience.

The people who have the most trouble with this are individuals with a hoarding problem, an estimated 5% of the population. Hoarding -- the excessive acquisition of or failure to discard objects of seemingly little value such that one's living spaces become hard to use -- is linked to different psychological issues. It's linked to depression (lack of motivation to do anything, such that even throwing away junk mail is a big big task, overwhelming) and anxiety (such that the idea of discarding junk mail becomes completely overwhelming -- "what if there's something in one of those junk mail flyers that I need to know? I can't possibly throw that away without reading all of it")... and for these people, junk mail is more that a small daily irritation. It's a big daily irritation which can consume hours each day.