Taking in the Mail!

Sounds simple, doesn’t it? “Sure, we’ll take the mail in.”

Now, in a normal household, that means grabbing the three or four bills that you still send via snail mail, sticking stamps on them and driving them to the outside post office box, where you drop them off in the slot. You never have to leave the comfort of your own vehicle. You don’t get wet, hot or tired.

Well, when we “Take the mail” here at Quilted Twins, it’s another story. Follow along with us as we show you yesterday’s trip.

“Ok, guys, I’m taking the mail now.” Well, that is the term heard three times weekly around here, around 1:30 or so each afternoon, as we wind up whatever it is that we’re going to ship.

I gather my keys, my purse and drink, if I’ve got one, and climb into my van, which is usually on the front side of our office building.

My first stop is to back up to the back door of the former TheCouponClippers.com office, where we now do most of our taping of the boxes.

After unlocking the door, I’m greeted with a tower of mail, ready to head to the post office. Thankfully, I try to park as close to the door as possible. It’s not that I’m lazy, just practical. In the Florida sun and humidity or pouring rain, even an extra four or five feet can feel like 100 yards, after your 20th tub goes into your vehicle.

On this particular day, Becky was here to help me, so we loaded the back end of the van as carefully as we could.

After emptying the doorway of the first building, we moved down the back alley to the back door of our Quilted Twins office, where we picked up another 6 tub loads of mail. These were the packages that were either super heavy, or last minute, and we didn’t want to send them on over to the official taping area, as we had let that office move on to other tasks.

We weren’t sure it was going to all fit, so Becky volunteered to have the last package sit on her lap. It was either that or we take two vehicles.

Today we had 188 packages going out.

The post office is only located about 5 minutes from our Quilted Twins office, so it wasn’t hard to get there. We drive up to the back, where the semi is waiting to pick up the 2 o’clock shipment. I wasn’t sure if we were going to miss this load, since it was now 2:05 p.m.

After I get backed up and into the unloading zone, we have to build our own box on a plastic pallet, since none of the crates are large enough for today’s haul.

Then we loaded up the boxes, carefully putting them into the bottom of the box, letting the weight of the boxes hold the untapped crate safely onto the plastic pallet.

After the boxes went in, we neatly put in the flat rate mailers; then we finished by leaving our scan form, small first-class mailers and ONE DAY marked boxes and packages in mail totes off to the side of the huge box full of mail.

We did completely fill the large box, with an extra mail tub of priorities that didn’t quite fit.

While we were taking pictures, the guys at the post office were taking our scan form, putting the extra tub of packages and preparing to get the large packed up box onto the huge semi that was seemingly waiting just for us to finish.

As we were preparing to pull out, we got to see, with great satisfaction, the men get our huge pallet of mail onto the back end of the semi.

There’s something very satisfying about seeing our hard work heading off to the big world out there, even if it’s just heading to Ybor City in Tampa, for its next sorting spot.

We put a lot of work into each of your packages, and we trust that you’ll enjoy the fabrics as much as we love preparing the orders.

Five minutes later we’re back at the Quilted Twins office, with total time elapsed between 30 and 40 minutes.

“Taking in the mail” is not a simple task in the Florida heat and rain. It’s a heavy, hot and thankless task, but it’s rewarding in its own right, as you mentally visualize the fun that each recipient has in receiving the boxes we’re shipping off.

Thanks for all of your orders! We’ll do it all over again on Wednesday!

---

Have a great day wherever you are reading this!

Be sure to check out what we have in the store!

---

---