USPS: Let Them Do it For You
You have enough to do this holiday season with decorating your home, attending parties, baking, hosting visitors, shopping and driving to the post office to mail packages or pick up stamps for holiday cards. If you could lighten the load a little, wouldn’t that be a relief? Cut back on wasted time and money by greening your holiday shipping practices through the U.S. Postal Service (USPS).
Keep it Simple
If a USPS Mail Carrier comes to your home or business five to six times per week, why not have them pick up your holiday packages during one of those deliveries? This can help you cut back on the trips you have to make to the post office, saving you time, money and probably a little patience. The USPS green site has a handy calculator to estimate the gallons of gas used, fuel costs and pounds of CO2 emitted from your trips to the post office over an entire year.
Carrier pickup is one of the easiest and greenest ways to frugally ship your packages this holiday season. It allows you to ship any number of packages, as long as each weighs less than 70 pounds. Some important points to keep in mind as you prep your holiday packages:
- Reuse a box for shipping, or obtain one through the Post Office. Any Priority Mail or Express Mail boxes or envelopes can be ordered online, free of charge. These items are 100 percent recyclable.
- The package(s) will need to be sealed and addressed with paid postage when the Mail Carrier arrives on the scheduled day to drop off your regular mail. You can print your own label at home. In order to calculate the cost of shipping, you will need the dimensions of your package, its weight and the zip code of its destination.
- Schedule your pickup for the next day or as early as three months in advance. Changes can be made to your request before 2:00 a.m. (CST) the day of your scheduled pickup.
- A confirmation notice will be left at the pickup location so you can rest assured that your delivery is on its way. You can also track and confirm delivery of your packages online.
An Added Bonus
Save yourself the headache of standing in line after the holidays: you can use the carrier pickup service to return those “it’s the thought that counts” gifts that you want to exchange for something you can actually use. Thanks for the scarf anyways, Aunt Mildred!
No matter how you do it, utilizing free and convenient carrier pickup services to cut back on emissions and time is an easy fix to making your holidays more enjoyable this season.
