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Thursday, October 17, 2013

Day 17 - Snail Mail

Getting mail is one of the challenges that we are still working out. We have our permanent mailing address that we have maintained in our home state for nearly 30 years. That works for most things. We maintain it for now since we do not really know at this point if we will settle in a new place and move our residency. We will cross that bridge when we come to it. We tie most of our life to this address. However, upon retirement, we had to make some location choices regarding other issues and chose to use another family members address. This has been a godsend as he is extremely computer savvy. That means he just opens and scans our snail mail things and then emails them to us. Works awesome good in this situation. 

We really don't receive that much relevant mail so getting the actual mail to us is not a huge problem. When we call home we always get an over the phone update on what's arrived since our last call. If action is needed we give those details and all is well. There can be issues with the more personal type mail, such as letters, birthday cards. That's tougher to deal with. I am a letter writer, like real paper with ink on it and I have a couple friends that correspond with me this way so it makes that type mail harder to get. I can send from anywhere but them responding can be awkward since it either has to be read to me over the phone or forwarded to me with a huge delay. 

MiRV super happy with this latest delivery of polycarbonate sway bar bushings!
(The only thing we could find locally was rubber)

The truly big mail issue we run into is with package deliveries. If we want or need to order things and we often do it's sometimes difficult to plan for/get a delivery. I like, okay love, ebay for several things; it can save me quite a bit of money on several items we use regularly. Then there are some things for the RV that we can usually get a better price on by ordering online not to mention there are other RV items that we have ONLY been able to find online. So our solution is to plan to order when we know we are going to be somewhere long enough to order and receive the package and find somewhere to get it delivered. Friends have been A.W.E.S.O.M.E about accommodating us in these instances, Especially MM he was the local postal boy for us for 5 months in LA! Then in OKC we were fortunate enough to have a family member there, same for when we were in Omaha, family again to the rescue. In AL we had gracious friends and the same for here in FL, thankfully we have amenable friends who don't mind to receive packages for us. The only obstacle we have run into with this is that since the mailing and billing name and address do not match sometimes a phone call is needed to give an explanation of what we are doing. Many sites do offer the send as a gift option and that solves any mailing/billing address issues! When we do get to where we think we will settle in FL we are planning to obtain a PO BOX to help with our mail challenges!

Speaking of challenges, I'm doing the 31 day challenge again this year! The details and lots of other great 31 days series are HERE!

1 comment:

  1. We used a mail service located in Penscola, Florida and it was fantastic! They would send the mail to us (and get rid of all the junk mail) whenever we wanted them to - sometimes we set up a specific time (like twice a month) and sometimes it would be random as we traveled from place to place. We didn't have to change our state residency - tags, driver's licenses, etc. and the service was fantastic. These services are available in many different states and it might be something you could use.

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