Nailing up the mailbox

Scott Adams pointed out yesterday that "I don’t even check my physical mailbox daily. I only check it when I think it might be too full for the mailman to stuff more crap in there." I sympathise, and have often wondered about simply nailing my letterbox shut. With a sign saying not "no junk mail" but simply "no mail".

Anyone I actually want to hear from emails me, texts me, phones me or leaves me a note on Facebook/LJ/etc. My bills and banking are all done online. I just got back from two weeks away and the only things that had come through the door were pizza menus, junk mail, free newspapers, "sorry we missed you" notes from delivery companies and letters from a handful of companies admitting that they've somehow screwed up the instructions I left them to transact all our business online.

If I nailed the thing shut, as far as I can see the main downside would be having to let my parents know my office address so they could send postcards there instead - the one exception to the rule that nothing good ever comes in the post. Also, the various companies who deliver me things would have to actually follow my instruction to leave them by the front door rather than drop a "sorry we missed you" card through the letterbox. My letterbox is no longer a way to receive communications I want: it's used as a get-out clause by companies I've asked to talk to me in other, more convenient, ways, and as a way of spamming me by companies I don't want to talk to at all. Any medium with that much noise to signal I can do without.