You’ve Got Mail

One month without the annoyance of mail.... specifically all the junk mail.  It’s been great.

But one may ask, how do you get your mail?  (The important mail at least)

For now, we have taken the easy approach and imposed on a great friend and neighbor.  But to make her life simpler, we have used the power of the postal service to help manage the work load.

First, we put our mail on “vacation hold” for a few weeks, and had a mass delivery that she collected and sorted through to find the important items.  She kindly texted us some photos of items that looked important which we had her either hold until our return or send, then shipped to us at a campground we would be at long enough for the mail to get here and not miss us.  Our first shipment of mail came while in Canada and around the holiday for Canada and the US, but we had an extended stay in this location.

Second,  we signed up for “Informed Delivery” via the USPS, which emails us each day of mail to be delivered that day.  This notifies us of first class mail (and some promotional mail that comes directly with our name on them), so we know of specific things we need to make sure we don’t miss.

Third, when our neighbor ships the mail, she sends us the tracking number, which we then sign up for tracking updates via text from the USPS, so we have a great idea where it is in the process of getting to us, and it also provides a text of when it has been delivered.  Today, the campground gate attendant delivered it directly to our campsite.  (We had informed the gate the mail was coming so they did not reject it when it arrived.)

Fourth, for anything possible (that we really wanted), we signed up for electronic delivery rather than mail delivery, so we get what we need even sooner than snail mail allows and it reduces the mail flow for our neighbor (and the cost to have it shipped to our remote locations).

So far, it’s working wonderfully.  We don’t miss the constant mail....at all.

Written by Sandy