The following piece was recently published in the New Hampton Tribune and may soon appear in the Des Moines Register. It deals with a sensitive and controversial subject: curtailing postal service by stopping Saturday delivery and/or closing small-town post offices. Following is an experiment that you may wish to try yourself:
One Month of Snail Mail
The entire experiment was so unlike the way I generally live my life. I am not particularly introspective or analytical. But there is a sentimentality deep within my soul for the small town upbringing that I experienced in the northeast Iowa community of Lawler during the 1950s. In those days the population hovered around the 500 mark. Today there are 20% fewer citizens. Even though my wife Renee and I live in a suburb of Des Moines, more than three hours southwest of Lawler, a part of my heart truly cares about their future.
Reading about the potential closing of small town post offices by our nearly bankrupt United States Postal Service bothers me greatly. It represents one more nail in the coffin of the idyllic lifestyle these tiny communities offer. I am a supporter of any alternative that might help keep them open; one of which is giving up Saturday mail delivery. However, that idea made me curious about what we really do get in the mail each day.
On a whim, I made the decision to keep the envelopes from every single bit of mail that we received from September 1 – September 30, 2011, one year ago. I had absolutely no preconceived notion of what to expect, other than guessing that the majority of it would be advertising or what has colloquially become known as junk mail.
My wife and I had already both been retired at the time. And notably, it was not an election year, which would have significantly skewed what I’m about to report!
To develop a system and make some sense of the numbers, I broke the mail into 12 distinct categories. There is a fair amount of subjectivity involved because some of the mail, from a bank or credit card company for instance, had important information such as a monthly statement along with self-promotion material. At other times the same source sent out blatant advertising letters. In each case, I listed it under advertising unless there was otherwise significant information of importance to us.
One most surprising observation in my mind is that I missed my calling in life. Perhaps I should become a gambler because my first guess was right. Of the 89 pieces of snail mail received that month, one-half (44 of them) were advertising!
In alphabetical order with number of correspondence in parenthesis are a list of the senders. I admittedly claim nothing scientific about the results. Because I am a writer with few mathematical skills who rounded the percentages, it comes to a 98% total. But you will get the gist:
- AARP (3 = 3%)
- Advertising (44 = 49%)
- Banks (4 = 4%)
- Credit Card Company Info (2 = 2%)
- Insurance Company Info (5 = 6%)
- Magazines, Newsletters (10 = 11%)
- Medical Clinics (4 = 4%)
- Personal Letters (5 = 6%)
- Political Ads (1 = 1%)
- Request for Donations (7 = 8%)
- Social Security Administration (2 = 2%)
- Utility Companies (2 = 2%)
Frankly, a very high percentage of the advertising mail did not get read; much of it did not even make it into the house (except for the envelope) since I pass our recycle bin on the way inside.
We don’t subscribe to any magazines or newsletters, so much of what we received in that category also landed in aforementioned recycle bin. We pay our utility bills online, but do open anything coming from the water department or gas & electric company. Unless there is obvious advertising on the envelope, I tend to read AARP mailings because I volunteer as an instructor for their driver safety classes and don’t want to miss anything pertaining to that situation.
Had this experiment been conducted in 2012 rather than 2011, there would have been a plethora of political glossy postcards to report. And I always take at least a quick glance an any mail from Social Security Administration and banks, credit card companies, or insurance companies with whom we have a relationship. If we don’t already deal with them, it’s automatic recycle city without even scanning. Since we are no longer in the workforce, we carefully choose charitable giving based on past experiences and are not influenced by mailed solicitations.
So what are my conclusions about this little exercise?
- I highly recommend you give it a try. Just make sure that you save absolutely everything for one month. It was quite easy to do by opening what we deemed worth examining, and then tossing the empty envelope into a plastic grocery bag to be counted later
- E-mail rules. Without actually comparing, I have no doubt that we received 4 to 5 times as much correspondence (and probably much more) on our respective laptops
- Texting is becoming a bigger issue almost daily as a way of connecting
- There are a lot of trees being cut down to provide junk mail that often is never even opened
- It is still fun to receive the rare written personal note from a family member or friend
- In our case, getting snail mail on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday would be more than sufficient
- Finally, I hope that the post offices in small town Iowa and around the country can remain open for a long time. That probably does not make fiscal sense, but the fun of running into your neighbors while ‘checking the mail’ at the local post office and catching up on a little gossip is Americana at its best. Some things are worth paying for. And that, in my mind, is one of them
Bill Sheridan, Freelance Writer
8106 Brookview Drive
Urbandale, IA 50322
William_sheridan1@msn.com / www.sheridanwrites.com / Phone: 515.669.4913