Going Postal – Mailbox First World Problems

So I have this mail slot on my new garage door. What’s up with that? I thought it was an inconvenience to have to trek out my front door to the mailbox at the end of the driveway, which would be oh so delightful when it was raining or snowing. But I was WRONG!

New Jersey is weird

In fact, it is so much more annoying and nightmarish to navigate the boxes and dark corners of the garage to scrape my mail up off the ground and hope my fingers don’t brush up against something furry, or slimy, or worse… moving! Ewww!

To discuss the placement of the slot based on function alone, once the garage is empty of all the moving boxes and our stuff is once again neatly in it’s new place, convenience is missing from this mailbox scenario. Should I actually want to park a car in the garage, unless I physically got out of the car once the door was raised (automatically because there is an opener installed on this garage door) to pick up the mail from the ground, I would end up driving and over and henceforth crushing all the mail/packages/magazines delivered to me if I drove directly into the garage without looking for the mail first! Again…what in the blue blazes were they thinking??

I’ve got to be able to do this better! What if I could re-purpose something I already have, therefore saving us some money for a new mailbox? There’s got to be a regulation somewhere about this, the government (the postal service in this case) wouldn’t stand for deregulated mail delivery, right?

Internet search yielded no results. Surveying the neighborhood I see there’s no one way about it, the neighbors are all doing something different.

A “catch the mail” basket for slot in garage door

I could seek to solve the “mail on the floor” dilemma by installing some kind of crate to catch the mail such as this:

Fancy schmancy! I wouldn’t have to reinvent the wheel, just merely enhance it… Still, the prospect of having to travel ALL the way to the garage just to get my mail, seems still inconvenient. Besides, there is still the problem that the existing mail slot in the garage door will not fit packages, and I do receive quite a few of those since I actively participate in book swaps (via paperbackswap.com), so the mailman still has to put those packages somewhere.  

I’m not saving my mail carrier any work with the basket solution.  As I’ve said, I’m all about efficiency. Not just for myself, but for others.

Classic box next to the front door on a covered porch

I’ve noticed as I’ve walked and driven around my new neighborhood that some people have mailboxes next to their front door.

This one is from Pottery Barn…simple.

Or on a post

And I’ve seen them next to the street, and also right by the front door. Classic lines, white post, picket fence. Basic.

However, I’ve also seen the postal delivery people walking down some streets (like mine) and driving down other streets delivering the mail to the mailboxes at the curb. I might have only been living here one month, but I am going to take a wild guess and say that anything goes here in Cherry Hill, NJ.

I would like to make my own. I suppose I will have to stop in to my local post office branch and see if any of the postal workers have any specifics. Wish me luck!