Here’s a little-known fact: Thursday (February 4th) is National Thank A Mail Carrier Day! 

If you didn’t know, mail carriers are those dear little magical fairies that deliver all our secret Amazon packages.  Seriously though, you rarely see them. You just open the door and BOOM, there’s your package! I have had the privilege and honor of speaking to our regular mail carriers just a few times, and they have always been such sweet ladies. When we moved to our current home, I was VERY pregnant. Our mail carrier found out and she made sure to knock and place any heavy packages inside our door. All mail carriers don’t necessarily show that much attention to detail, but I am so thankful that we have two awesome regular mail carriers.

Now we do have one mail carrier that I would probably like to exchange, upgrade, or return for store credit…but I am sure he works really hard and delivering packages is no joke.  Especially when you have to do it in the rain, sleet, or snow.

With that said, I would like to share with you five things you can do to thank your mail carriers. They do so much every single day and it, unfortunately, goes unnoticed by so many people. We don’t have to wait until the holiday season to thank them, we can make this a monthly tradition!

2. Prepare a snack cart.

Mail carriers can sometimes have long routes and a snack cart set up at your home could be a welcomed surprise. In your snack cart, you can place things like snack packs of cookies, granola bars, crackers, and trail mix. In the warmer months, you can add bottles of water and Gatorade on ice. Since we’re in a pandemic, you can also add some hand sanitizer. Plan to set your cart out every day or plan on setting it up on the days when you know you’ll have the most mail delivered. Hello, Amazon Prime!

3. Spring for a $20 gift.

If you get to know your mail carrier well enough, you may find yourself with enough information to go gift shopping for them.  Maybe you saw something that made you think of them while you were out grabbing this week’s pandemic essentials. You just have to be sure that the gift you choose is $20 or less.  According to federal regulations, “carriers are permitted to accept a gift worth $20 or less from a customer per occasion, such as Christmas.  However, cash and cash equivalents, such as checks or gift cards that can be exchanged for cash, must never be accepted in any amount. Furthermore, no employee may accept more than $50 worth of gifts from any one customer in any one calendar year period.”  — Public Relations, Corporate Communications, 11-1-12

4. Bake them some cookies.

When my daughter was smaller, we baked cookies for our mail carrier at the time as a part of our “Twelve days of Christmas” activity calendar. She was very young so she didn’t get to do much in the way of baking cookies, but she loved placing the box of cookies in our mailbox. Whether our mail carrier actually ate them or not, we will never know, but she wrote us a note and left it in our mailbox thanking us for her delicious cookies! It really is the thought that counts and so many times our mail carries go unseen.

5. Thank them in person.

Meet your mail carrier at the door or at your mailbox and give them a personal, face to face (or mask to mask) “Thank you”.  If your mail carrier is anything like ours, you can almost set your watch by them. Our mail carrier usually arrives around the same time every day, so it what would be pretty easy for me to meet her at the mailbox. If you aren’t able to meet them at the mailbox, then just wait until they knock on your door or ring the doorbell.  Just make sure you get there quick because they are fast!

Well, that’s all I have for this post, but I’m sure there are even more ways that you could think of to show your mail carrier some appreciation. If you have a suggestion to add, please leave a comment below.  Thank you for reading and as always…

                                                                                   Happy Journeying, Good People!