This article is part of my Adulting Series. In my experience as a teacher of high school and community college young adults, I've been asked many questions about general life stuff we all need to know about. I decided to write a series of articles to address these questions, as well as other information that is worth sharing, even if no one specifically asked.
This is a topic that has recently been on social media, and I think it deserves attention. Sending "snail mail" a task that today's teenagers and young adults likely have no experience with. Is it a common task? Realistically, no. But the US Postal Service is still very much a part of our society, and it's still important that everyone knows how to use it. If nothing else, anyone might need it to cast our vote someday. So for my next few blog posts, I'm going to focus on a few tasks that fall between the cracks for our younger generations, beginning with how to mail a letter via the USPS.
Truly, mailing a letter is not hard, but it still must be taught. Before email and other online communications, we learned how by watching our parents do it. Every month, they wrote out checks to pay the bills, put them in envelopes, stamped them, and dropped them in the mailbox. It was also how we communicated with each other, especially over long distances, because phone calls were expensive (I know that's hard to believe, even for those of us who lived it). So we wrote letters and sent cards to each other all the time. My besties and I even mailed funny cards to each other when we lived in the same town. Getting mail was fun!
But for the past 25-ish years, sending mail via the USPS has become less common. We pay our bills online and we can call or text anyone whenever we want on our cell phones. So it's understandable that younger generations haven't learned it the way we did. The good news is that it's SUPER easy to do.
Let's say you want to mail someone a birthday card. Here are the steps to do that:
Make or purchase the card. Sign it, write your own message (if you want), then slide the card into its envelope. Seal the envelope, either by licking the sticky strip, or using a damp paper towel to activate the glue.
Write the person's address on the front of the envelope. Try to center the address on the envelope (see below).
At the top left corner of the front of the envelope, write YOUR name and address. This is called the return address, and it's so the post office can return the mail to you if they can't deliver it for any reason (i.e,. if the person moved or if you made a mistake when writing the address).
Put a stamp on the front of the envelope, in the top, right corner (see below).
Place the envelope in your personal mailbox. If your mailbox has a red flag on the side, raise it; that shows the letter carrier that you have outgoing mail.
Alternatively, you can also take your mail to a post office and drop it in the big, blue mailbox, or hand it to the postal employee inside.
How to Buy a Stamp
You can buy stamps at a post office, at USPS.com, or at many grocery stores/other retail stores.
To purchase in person at the post office, go inside and get in line at the service desk.
When it's your turn, tell the postal worker you need a stamp (or you could buy a book of stamps if you want to mail several things, like Christmas cards).
The postal worker will offer to show you different designs, so you can choose what your stamps look like.
Pay for your purchase.
Put the stamp on the envelope.
Give it to the postal worker and they will add it to the day's outgoing mail.
NOTE: Alternatively, some post offices have stamp vending machines where you can purchase stamps without standing in line or talking to a postal worker.
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