How No More Saturday Mail Will Impact Your MilFam

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Yesterday the United States Post Office announced that they’re getting rid of Saturday delivery of first class-mail. Beginning in August, we’ll no longer get letters, cards, bills, magazines, catalogs and junk mail on Saturdays.

Even in this day and age of electronic communication and social media, I love real mail in my real mailbox, and I'm kind of sad that I'll have one less day of it. When my husband was deployed, one of the highlights of my day was the mailbox walk. In that short walk from my front door to the mailbox, my excitement built as I wondered if that would be the day the mailman brought me something with his name on it. The mail run also meant that my daily outgoing letters were on their way downrange, where they would soon become the highlight of my husband’s day.

He may not be deployed now, but mail still makes me happy.

On the upside, this new delivery schedule won’t be affecting packages, PO box mail or post office hours. According to the USPS website,

“Once implemented during August of 2013, mail delivery to street addresses will occur Monday through Friday. Packages will continue to be delivered six days per week. Mail addressed to PO Boxes will continue to be delivered on Saturdays. Post Offices currently open on Saturdays will remain open on Saturdays.”

So how is the elimination of Saturday mail going to impact military families? Officials with USPS speculated that it won't make a huge difference, but didn't get back with us with any further information by our deadline. Those love letters you write may take a little bit longer to get to your sweetheart downrange, but because package delivery will remain unchanged, all those care packages we jam pack with love will still reach their destinations in a timely manner.

While some of us still cherish letters, generally speaking, so many military families communicate with faraway loved ones through email, Facebook, Skype, and text messages that the art of the handwritten letter seems to have become almost as archaic as the telegram. So unless the USPS figures out a way to stop all electronic forms of communication on Saturdays, I think we can handle not getting snail mail delivery.

When we asked our Facebook readers what they thought about Saturday mail delivery disappearing, most of the responders said they wouldn’t miss it (especially because it means one less day to worry about finding bills in the mailbox). But there were some people, like myself, who will.

So what do you think? Will you miss Saturday mail delivery? How will this affect you as a military family?

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