Curb appeal
When driving along rural backroads or suburban streets, curbside mailboxes can be a focal point of curbside landscape, good or bad. Mailboxes post a glimpse of the homeowner’s personal style — simplistic, ornate or clunky.
We appreciate some of the creative expressions displayed throughout the years. But mailboxes also need to be functional and maintained. Mailbox Improvement Week is a great time to fix hinges and make sure your mailbox works in all the ways it should — as landscape artwork and to protect your mail.
Campaign promotes spruce-ups, repair
Clean, well-designed and well-maintained mailboxes aren’t only aesthetically pleasing; they help smooth delivery for mail carriers and speed service for an entire route. Mailbox Improvement Week is an opportunity for customers on city, rural and contract delivery service routes to do their part to improve the delivery and collection of their mail.
In addition to requiring that all mailboxes be approved by the Postmaster General, USPS urges customers to make sure their receptacle is fully operational, weather resistant, safe, convenient, neat and sized to support their daily mail and package volume.
Mailbox Improvement Week originated in 1938 as Clean Up Rural Box Week. The effort continued to focus on rural mailboxes each year until 1942, when the program was suspended for seven years due to World War II. In 1957, the program was widened to include all curbside mailboxes and has continued each year since.
A version of this article was originally published on Link, the Postal Service’s employee news website.
Written by Lisa Whitehead, USPS customer contact solutions specialist