With the way things are going with the postal service maybe it's time we all start taking steps to reduce the amount of mail we have to deal with to a bare minimum. If you take a look inside the mailman's bag, I wonder what percentage of what he is delivering is stuff that today could be handled just as easily electronically or, worse yet, how much of it is just unwanted junk mail. I'll bet the percentage of unnecessary or unwanted mail is huge!
As an example of what I mean... When I had a house (with a curbside mailbox) it would take only a couple of days for the box to be stuffed full of mail. Almost none of that mail was needed or wanted. In fact, in looking at the trash I sent to the landfill every week, many times a good 50% of it was junk mail and other unwanted or unnecessary mail. Bad for the environment, bad for the mail carrier, and bad for me.
Five years ago I sold my house and moved onto my boat full time. When I got rid of the house I rented a post office box that is about the size of a regular shoe box. I didn't leave any forwarding address because all the people I didn't want to get mail from would be given that forwarding address by the postal service (found this out the hard way). I decided who really needed to send me actual snail mail and changed my address with them directly. Since then I've been very careful not to give out my PO box address to anyone who doesn't absolutely need it and request that those who do need it not send me anything non-essential and not give it out to anyone else. Almost all companies and other organizations who need to correspond with you can do it through email and other electronic paperless methods and they will do this if you insist on it (even if you have to insist on it by telling them you won't buy their product if they must have your address in order to deal with you). Almost all companies that insist you give them your address are only doing that so they can send you junk mail directly or so they can sell their database of addresses to companies that specialize in sending out junk mail. My friends and family all correspond through email these days anyway, so most of them don't even have my PO box address. In the past I've had friends use my address (innocently, but without my permission) which resulted in more unwanted mail coming to me, so unless there is a real need not even they get my address. Even most payments, such as paychecks, reimbursements, etc can be handled electronically in one way or another, as can all financial statements, vehicle registration notices, utility bills etc.
The result of my efforts? After 5 years with the same address I get almost no unwanted mail. I can let my shoebox size PO box go unemptied for a month at a time and it still doesn't overflow. This shows just how little paper mail we really need to get in these days of modern electronic communication. With the post office charging more and more for less and less service and still not being able to be profitable enough to satisfy them, I think maybe it's just one of those things that is no longer practical.
. I would hate to see the postal service be deleted and for all of those who work for the US postal service lose their jobs.