Ah, the mystery of how to handle mail when you don’t have a physical address! Tammy and I have talked about becoming on-the-road sleuths, but this mail mystery has been more “trial and error” to find the key that unlocks the door.
In an earlier post, we’ve talked about the challenges of not having a permanent, legal address. My favorite memory was Tammy being honest with Canadian immigration when they asked where home was and them asking a follow up question of “so what’s to keep you from staying in Canada?” I walked through without a pause by saying Chicago. Truth is, if craft beer was the only criteria, we would be well on our way to adding eh’ to every sentence.
Originally we thought sticking with the good ol’ US Postal Service was going to work. You know, “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.” That may be true of the folks actually delivering mail, but it sure hasn’t been working at the source.
We haven’t had a post office box since the first of the year, but I am still getting their online notification of mail arriving in the box. That sounds like good news, but I set up mail forwarding to come to our mail delivery service address and absolutely nothing has been forwarded. Multiple inquiries on where our mail is has been met with crickets. It’s not the end of the world. However, I have been expecting a few important items which I still don’t have and at this point expect I will never get.
We had toyed with the idea of a private mail service but originally went with the US Post Office due to cost. Performance replaced cost, and I selected My Traveling Mailbox as our provider. This gives us a “physical address”, although neither of us can ever remember it, and have to look it up while the person asking thinks we’re senile. (We’re not.)
We can now get mail and packages with instant online notification, and for each article of mail we have a variety of options from deleting, opening and scanning, forwarding, etc. Forwarding requires us to be somewhere we can get mail or has a post office that accepts general delivery mail. We’ve been getting items 3-4 days after making the request for forwarding.
While we pay for the service, it has to date performed as advertised and I am very pleased. It looks like mail has been solved. Now if we can just come up with a quick and believable answer when someone asks us where we live.
I tell people “I’ve just moved” when I have to look up the address. They seem to accept that as a reasonable alternative to senility. For now.