I just figured out something that is going to save me SO MUCH TIME.  I wanted to share here, since it's such a busy thread, and I know we all pretty much do trades/shipping anyways.  I know this won't help everyone, and I'm sure it's something most of you are already aware of, but... here goes! I live in a neighborhood where everyone shares a large and divided mailbox, kind of like they have in apartment complexes, but we all live in houses.  Our outgoing mail slot is SUPER SMALL, and I've never been able to fit anything more than a letter in it, not even a greeting card, so I've always had to drive up to the drop box when I had something to mail out. The other day, I wasn't feeling well, my son was being a terror, and putting him in his car seat and then being enclosed in a vehicle with his defiant three-year-old-going-on-teenager ass to drive the 1/4th mile up to the nearest drop box sounded like actual hell on earth to me.  I had two trades that I wanted/needed to ship out, and I noticed that the mail hadn't run yet.  I'm usually never quick enough to catch the mailman while he's actually at our mailbox (although I have been able to do that once), so I had an idea.  I put a post-it on the packages saying "These are outgoing packages, but they won't fit in the outgoing mail slot.  Will you pretty please take them?  Thank you so much!"  And I put them in my actual mail box pointing out to where he would see the note while he was delivering the mail. And he totally took them for me! I've done it two more times since, and everything gets to everyone so much more quickly now.  It seems to skip a bit of a step in processing, plus the products don't sit in that drop bin all day either.  I figured I would give it a try because I know that people with regular mailboxes are able to do that, so why not?  Plus, the packages had tracking on them, so there wasn't a real chance of them going "missing."  Maybe this is common sense for some of you, but I'm hoping there are a few of you out there who never realized you could do this either!  I hope it helps to make your lives easier =) I plan on leaving him a packaged sweet goodie along with a, "Thank you for being awesome, and taking these packages for me.  Here's a sweet treat!" note next time I have something to send along.  I feel like he technically could be a dick about it and refuse to take them.  I know there's plenty of postal workers out there who hate their lives/jobs/the customers (and I totally don't blame them!)
/emoticons/
