I keep a small stack of mail-order catalogs in a wicker basket beside the wing chair in my front parlor, the way my mother kept hers in a silver letter rack on the hall table. Beauregard, my cocker spaniel, has come to recognize the rustle of one being opened. Among the catalogs in that basket, the Heartland America book is, frankly, the odd one out. It is not refined. It does not pretend to be. And that is precisely why I have kept it on the rotation for years.
Heartland America has been mailing its overstock catalog out of Minnesota since 1985, which makes it a contemporary of so many of the great mail-order houses I covered in my features-editor years at Better Homes & Gardens. Most of those names have closed their doors or gone exclusively to a website. Heartland America, against the grain, still prints, still mails, and still answers a telephone. As of early 2026, the catalog is alive on both fronts, and the request process has barely changed in a decade.
What Sort of Catalog Is This, Exactly?
Heartland America is, in essence, a clearance house dressed up as a hometown shop. Its merchandise mix includes housewares, small kitchen appliances, electronics, tools, jewelry, watches, and a rotating cast of what the trade calls liquidations and renewed goods. Prices are routinely advertised at fifty to seventy percent below retail, which I file in the cautious-but-occasionally-true column. The goods are not Brown-Jordan or All-Clad. What they are is honest discount inventory, photographed plainly, described plainly, and shipped from the same warehouse to your door.
The Heartland kitchen pages, in particular, reward a patient flip. Among the off-brand panini presses and stockpots I have, over the years, found a copper-bottomed double boiler, a perfectly serviceable spice grinder, and a set of stainless mixing bowls that have outlasted their pricier cousins from a department store I will not name. Beauregard's elevated feeding stand also came from those pages, and it is still standing, which I cannot say for the wicker one I bought at three times the price.
How to Request the Free Catalog
The mechanics are simple, and a reader of any age will manage them in five minutes. There are two reliable paths.
Through Catalogs.com
- Visit the Heartland America request page on this site, found under the bargain-shopping listings.
- Fill in your full name, complete mailing address, and email.
- Submit. Allow ten to fourteen business days for the first issue to arrive.
Direct Through Heartland America
- Go to heartlandamerica.com/catalog-request.html and complete the same short form.
- Or telephone 1-800-229-2901, Monday through Friday, 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Eastern. A real person answers, in a part of the country where people still say hello before they say anything else.
Catalogs are shipped only within the United States. There is no charge, no minimum order, and no obligation to buy a thing.
Reading the Book Properly
One develops, over a lifetime of catalog browsing, a method. Mine is to sit with a cup of coffee, a pen, and a slip of paper and to mark only what I would actually use. With Heartland America the discipline matters more than usual, because the temptation of a five-dollar gadget is precisely how five-dollar gadgets accumulate in a kitchen drawer.
A few practical filters I use:
- Brand name first, picture second. The catalog mixes recognizable names (Cuisinart, Black & Decker, Sony) with unfamiliar ones. A real label gives you a real warranty.
- Renewed is not new. Many of the electronics are factory-renewed, which I have come to find perfectly acceptable, provided the listing says so plainly. It usually does.
- Note the dimensions. A small mixer that looks dainty in print can dominate a counter. I keep a tape measure in the basket with the catalogs, a habit my late husband found amusing and I find indispensable.
- Price the shipping. Heartland's shipping costs are reasonable but not invisible. Add them to the line price before you decide a thing is a bargain.
Ordering, Once You Have Decided
You have three options, all of them civilized. You may post the order form back in the prepaid envelope, in the manner of one's grandmother. You may key in the item numbers from the printed catalog directly at heartlandamerica.com, which has a tidy quick-order field expressly for catalog shoppers. Or you may telephone the number above and read your numbers aloud to a person who will read them back to you.
I find the website perfectly straightforward. The main navigation breaks the inventory into Electronics, Household, Recreation & Health, Auto & Hardware, Fashion, Camera & Optics, Gifts, and Computer & Office. Within Household, you may filter further to lamps, clocks, weather stations, furniture, artwork, and the climate-control category that includes small heaters and fans. The site also features a Deal of the Day and a Month-End Cyber Sale that genuinely move prices, not the sort of countdown timer that resets at midnight.
Other Free Catalogs in a Similar Vein
If the Heartland sensibility suits you, a few near-relations are worth requesting through this site as well: Appliances Connection for larger kitchen pieces, Taylor Gifts for small household solutions, and Carol Wright for the value end of the spectrum. None of them is a designer book. All of them are useful in their way, and a household, as a rule, benefits from a mix.
A Closing Thought, from a Charleston Front Parlor
The handsome rooms one sees in a glossy shelter magazine are largely furnished out of frame, with a thousand small ordinary things that no decorator photographs. Cutting boards. Coasters. A second extension cord. A clock for the back hall. Catalogs like Heartland America exist to provide those quiet objects without drama and without markup. Send for the catalog, give it ten minutes a month with a cup of coffee, and you will be surprised how often it solves a small problem you had not yet decided to solve. Beauregard, for his part, will be napping at your feet, indifferent to the whole enterprise, which is its own form of approval.
