Care Packages

Care packages are the back-bone, the veritable life line of all correspondence when forward deployed. Nothing beats getting a box in the mail, opening it and finding little pieces of home inside. Its like Christmas and your birthday all rolled up into one. I know I used to live in the post office on board my last command. And even though my husband, who is in Kuwait right now, said it was okay that it took me almost two months to get him his first package in the mail, I know secretly he was hoping that I just hadn’t told him the truth.

I wanted his package to arrive and have it be a total surprise. It also doesn’t help that my mother, sent a package before me, and he gets it and to his glee, it has many treats inside that he liked. Why? Because my mother called me to find out what he would like and I told her what to get! So what’s my excuse?

The ugly monster of doubt and perfectionism reared its head this time. My box, which should have been the standard flat rate USPS box, and been the first of many, grew and grew as first I looked for the perfect sized box to house each additional item that I added to the growing piles of “things from home”. My mother called me and read me the riot act for not having mailed the box!

I was failing my duty as wife keeping that box in our front room, even though it was jammed full of stuff, it hadn’t been sealed and mailed. And like the gardener who told me that the best time to put down grass seed was anytime “because its not going to germinate in the bag“, the box was doing him no good sitting on the footstool in the front room.

Best size box? Small. No bigger than medium.

Prices for mailing can be a deterrent to sending anything in the first place. But it does pay to send it Priority via the USPS. Why? Because, sending it expedited will ensure that the handling on our end (stateside from our house, via the post office to the military depot) is as short as possible. Once it gets to the military depot, and there is one on the east coast, and one on the west coast, it travels via the military postal service which is not ran by the civilian sector we have stateside. They have to follow the same basic regulations, but its an entirely different animal. Depending if your recipient is on a ship because they are in the Navy or the Marines, or on land through any of the branches of the military, that can make an additional difference in the actual shipping time of the article.

Pro Tip: DO NOT SEND PERISHABLES!!

So unless you are vacuum sealing your homemade cookies, and they don’t need refrigeration, don’t send anything that could get there stale, moldy or rotted. Nothing is more depressing than getting a box of rotting food. TRUST ME on this!!

Consider the weight, don’t make it heavy

I love our active duty military folk, but I will admit, sometimes, those “mail calls”, the actual receiving of the shipment of mail, comes at the same time as a shipment of other supplies, like food, supply parts and other needs. These things are heavy, and get moved using the power of man power. Folks get tired! And unless that box is for them and they know it, I have seen mail get mistreated, or arrive looking like it sat under the helicopter first before it was delivered on deck. Yikes…And there is no use pointing fingers. Just take preventive measures.

Make sure to use padding!!!

Shield your articles inside. Some folks think “FRAGILE” is a province in Italy. Bubble wrap, newspaper, and recycling those bags of air that get mailed to us in things we order from catalogs are great. Military stations are readily equipped to recycle/eliminate that waste. However, I urge you to steer clear of the styrofoam peanuts. Nifty to use, but not so good to receive, especially if your family member is on a Navy ship.

Even reusing the plastic shopping bags you get from the grocery store and Walmart are real good for filler. What you don’t want in a box you pack is empty space. That space becomes a crush zone in a box. So unless you want them to receive crumbs and not cookies, pack something–light!! Remember, you have to pay for the total weight of your package!