The Mailbox Experiment

or

"How much mail would a mailbox box,
if a mailbox could box mail?"

One of the (many) details we need to sort out before Our Summer in Derry is what to do with our mail. Forwarding it across the pond seems impractical for only 11 weeks. I fear we'd only start getting mail when it would be time to come home.

Instead we're taking a two-prong approach:

1. Cut down on the mail we receive and
2. Forward the unavoidable mail to a PO Box. We'll have a local errand service pick the mail up from the PO Box and bring it to the house, which will have the added benefit of having someone walk through the house once a week.

For step 1, I have changed all the utilities over to e-billing. I am looking forward to not having to file the paid bills at the end of each month!

Also, I have signed up at Catalog Choice to take our name off mailing lists. What a slick service! We are only using the free service from them but I am still impressed.

OK, now we've done what we can to eliminate as much paper as we can. The question remains, and, hence the subtitle for this post, how much mail do we get? and what size PO Box will we need?

Leaving no doubt that this is a house of experimental scientists, I've gotten a box roughly the size of the smaller box we are considering. I'll fill the box with each day's mail this week to see whether the box is overflowing in a week.

After one day's mail, we have this:
So far, so good.






Update: 6/2/11
We went with the smaller sized postal box and are glad we didn't get the big one. Between signing up for Catalog Choice and learning that not all ads are forwarded, our little P.O. Box stays almost empty.