Yesterday started National Dog Bite Prevention Week and also Mailbox Improvement Week. Each year the third full week in May is a week designated to making mailboxes (especially those on rural or city driven routes) look nicer, but also help our letter carriers access and use them easier.
If you live in an area like me, you are prone to getting snow..which means plows come and obliterate the mailbox once a season. Luckily, this years snows weren't too bad and the mailbox made by step 2 held up nicely. In my area I see lots of rusty mailboxes and wonder why people do not take more pride in them. Well, perhaps they aren't as loving of the mail as I am..but it still makes me sad. If I were a mail carrier I would rather have a nicer neater box to deliver to as opposed to a rusty hard to open (or shut) mailbox. And I am thinking that was the motivation behind this national week of improvement.
So, I urge you to clean up your mailbox or replace it if it need be. Think of all the hard work the USPS does for us..the least we can do is make their job a little easier. Here are the five points the USPS is hoping to accomplish:
Mailboxes should be:
1. Approved by the postmaster general.
2. Designed to protect the mail from weather.
3. Safe to use.
4. Conveniently located.
5. Neat in appearance.
Does your mailbox meet those standards? If not, are you going to try and make it better?
uh ooh, my mailbox...well I just so happen to have posted on my blog about it..go to my blog and go back one post.
ReplyDeletewww.jeudaly.blogspot.com
I used to be a snowplow operator and may have pushed over one or two mailboxes in my career here in Alaska! I didn't actually hit them but that snow is some heavy stuff. Also the suction of the plow as it passes would suck the newspapers out of their tubes making for some pretty unhappy customers as well. D.O.T. is quite strict about inspecting mailboxes. They can't be so sturdy that they don't give way if someone crashes into them, then they are a liability.
ReplyDeleteI rely on a PO box these days security and dry mail.
I have a mailbox downstairs in the hallway of my building, and for some weird reason I also have a mail slot in my front up here also but that rarely is used ;) should make a post of it one day ;)
ReplyDeleteWe also have mailboxes on poles around here but they are not pretty these used to be the Dutch post standard ages ago ;) http://www.yourmailbox.nl/ptt-brievenbus.html?gclid=CIDG27ni5LACFYt-fAodYDiC0w LOLs at the pidgeon