Although the world has moved to email for most of its correspondence, we all still receive snail mail in the form of bills, advertisements, and packages. If vacations and weekend getaways are crowding your social calendar, and you don’t want your mailbox to overflow while you’re gone, you’ll need to devise a plan for your mail.
Thankfully, there are several different ways you can have your mail handled while you’re gone, depending on your travel plans and life circumstances.
Utilize a Virtual Mailbox
One of the easiest ways to handle your mail while traveling is to use a virtual mailbox service. These services allow you to receive mail at other locations by providing the address of the closest virtual mailbox to where you will be traveling. All of your mail will be forwarded to that address, where you can then pick up the letters and packages you receive while your out-of-office message is active.
Many of these services also allow you to see what letters and packages you receive through an app or online account. With this feature, you can check in with the app or website and see what you received before making the trips down to the physical location. Services with these check-in features also let you shred or dispose of the mail from the app, saving you a trip to the post office if all that awaits you is spam mail.
Ask a Friend or Neighbor for help.
A tried-and-true way of managing your mail while traveling is to recruit a friend or neighbor to check your house’s mailbox while you’re away. With this method, your neighbor or friend can pick up your mail and hold onto it for you until you get home from your travels.
This tip has fallen out of favor as more folks move to remote work, thus reducing the need for business travel or time-consuming errand runs that keep you out of the house for extended periods. Still, it’s a time-tested fallback strategy that ensures your mail will be in safe hands until you touch down on local soil. Plus, delegating mail management to someone in your network is the perfect excuse for a post-vacation catch-up session where you’ll be able to share all of the exciting details about your travels abroad.
Use Mail Forwarding
Usually, forwarding your mail to a new temporary location will require communicating directly with your local post office. This tip is best for folks moving to a new place well before their move-in date for a new home. The post office reserves this service for folks that are moving, but you might be able to forward packages and such coming in from private businesses for a while, depending on the business.
Place a hold on Receiving Mail
Finally, if nothing else works, you can always ask the post office to hold your mail until you get back from your trip. When you have your mail held, the post office gathers any mail you would receive during the duration of your vacation and store the letters and packages until you return.
The easiest way to have your mail held is to go online and put in the request with your local post office. You’ll need to verify your identity and home address before you request any holds, so make sure to complete this step at least a few days before your trip. Also, note that you can only have mail held for up to 30 days, so this won’t be great for extended vacations or long-term business trips.
Wrap Up
Now that you are more informed about the different options for handling your mail while on vacation, you’ll be able to relax without any worries fully. Whether you invest in a virtual mailbox service, you ask a friend for help, forward your mail to a different address, or you put your mail deliveries on hold, your mail will be in order and safe when you return.
