Postcrossing Blog

February is a busy month in the mail calendar, and we can’t wait for it to start! Are you ready?

We love a good mail challenge around here, and since February is the Month of Letters, it is time to dust off all that special stationery and put pen to paper! It’s the perfect opportunity for reconnecting with family and friends, sending a Valentine card to your special someone, saying thank you to the helpful people in your life… or simply surprising strangers across the world with postcards! 😉

The rules of the Month of Letters challenge are simple:

• Mail at least one item through the post every day it runs. Write a postcard, a letter, send a picture or a cutting from a newspaper… anything goes!
• Write back to everyone who writes to you. This can count as one of your mailed items.

That’s it! The challenge started back in 2012, after American writer Mary Robinette Kowal decided it was time for a break from the internet. She spent a month offline, and asked her friends to communicate with her through letters. The results were relaxing and intimate, so she decided to invite others to join, sparking a yearly flurry of correspondence.
If you’re planning to join this year, you’re welcome to share your progress with other participants on this forum topic.

Another happy mail-related event coming up is Mail Carrier Appreciation Day, which happens every year on February 4th. This is the day to celebrate our trusty mail carriers, who make it possible for this hobby to exist by delivering all our postcards!

The date falls on a Sunday this year, so be sure to prepare something nice for your mail carrier the day before — for instance, pour your gratitude into a thank you note that you’ll deliver (or affix to your mailbox) for them to discover on their rounds. I’m sure it’ll be the highlight of their day week!

If you can, take a photo of what you did to celebrate this special day, and share a link to it in the comments! 😊

February is a busy month in the mail calendar, and we can’t wait for it to start! Are you ready?

We love a good mail challenge around here, and since February is the Month of Letters, it is time to dust off all that special stationery and put pen to paper! It’s the perfect opportunity for reconnecting with family and friends in these socially-distanced times, sending a Valentine card to your special someone, saying thank you to the helpful people in your life… or simply surprising strangers across the world with postcards! 😉

The rules of the Month of Letters challenge are simple:

• Mail at least one item through the post every day it runs. Write a postcard, a letter, send a picture or a cutting from a newspaper… anything goes!
• Write back to everyone who writes to you. This can count as one of your mailed items.

That’s it! The challenge started back in 2012, after American writer Mary Robinette Kowal decided it was time for a break from the internet. She spent a month offline, and asked her friends to communicate with her through letters. The results were relaxing and intimate, so she decided to invite others to join, sparking a yearly flurry of correspondence.
If you’re planning to join this year, you’re welcome to share your progress with us on this forum topic.

Another happy mail-related event coming up is Mail Carrier Appreciation Day, which happens every year on February 4th. This is the day to celebrate our trusty mail carriers, who make it possible for this hobby to exist by delivering all our postcards!

The date falls on a Saturday this year, so if you don’t have mail delivery on the weekends, make sure to prepare something nice for your mail carrier the day before — for instance, pour your gratitude into a thank you note that you’ll deliver (or affix to your mailbox) for them to discover on their rounds. I’m sure it’ll be the highlight of their day week!

If you can, take a photo of what you did to celebrate this special day, and share a link to it in the comments! 😊

February is a busy month in the mail calendar, and we can’t wait for it to start! Are you ready?

We love a good mail challenge around here, and since February is the Month of Letters, it is time to dust off all that special stationery and put pen to paper! It’s the perfect opportunity for reconnecting with family and friends in these socially-distanced times, sending a Valentine card to your special someone, saying thank you to the helpful people in your life… or simply surprising strangers across the world with postcards! 😉

The rules of the Month of Letters challenge are simple:

• Mail at least one item through the post every day it runs. Write a postcard, a letter, send a picture or a cutting from a newspaper… anything goes!
• Write back to everyone who writes to you. This can count as one of your mailed items.

That’s it! The challenge started back in 2012, after American writer Mary Robinette Kowal decided it was time for a break from the internet. She spent a month offline, and asked her friends to communicate with her through letters. The results were relaxing and intimate, so she decided to invite others to join, sparking a yearly flurry of correspondence.
If you’re planning to join this year, you’re welcome to share your progress with us on this forum topic.

Another happy mail-related event coming up is Mail Carrier Appreciation Day, which happens every year on February 4th. This is the day to celebrate our trusty mail carriers, who make it possible for this hobby to exist by delivering all our postcards!

The date falls on a Friday this year, so make sure to prepare something nice for your mail carrier and give them a smile before the weekend — for instance, pour your gratitude into a thank you note that you’ll deliver (or affix to your mailbox) for them to discover on their rounds. I’m sure it’ll be the highlight of their day week!

If you can, take a photo of what you did to celebrate this special day, and share a link to it in the comments! 😊

February is a busy month in the mail calendar, and we can’t wait for it to start! Are you ready?

We love a good mail challenge around here, and since February is the Month of Letters, it is time to dust off all that special stationery and put pen to paper! It’s the perfect opportunity for reconnecting with family and friends in these socially-distanced times, sending a Valentine card to your special someone, saying thank you to the helpful people in your life… or simply surprising strangers across the world with postcards! 😉

The rules of the Month of Letters challenge are simple:

• Mail at least one item through the post every day it runs. Write a postcard, a letter, send a picture or a cutting from a newspaper… anything goes!
• Write back to everyone who writes to you. This can count as one of your mailed items.

That’s it! The challenge started back in 2012, after American writer Mary Robinette Kowal decided it was time for a break from the internet. She spent a month offline, and asked her friends to communicate with her through letters. The results were relaxing and intimate, so she decided to invite others to join, sparking a yearly flurry of correspondence.
If you’re planning to join this year, you’re welcome to share your progress with us on this forum topic.

Another happy mail-related event coming up is Mail Carrier Appreciation Day, which happens every year on February 4th. This is the day to celebrate our trusty mail carriers, who make it possible for this hobby to exist by delivering all our postcards!

The date falls on a Thursday this year, so make sure to prepare something nice for your mail carrier and give them a smile — for instance, pour your gratitude into a thank you note that you’ll deliver (or affix to your mailbox) for them to discover on their rounds. I’m sure it’ll be the highlight of their day week!

If you can, take a photo of what you did to celebrate this special day, and share a link to it in the comments! 😊

Dear postcrossers,

It’s a little crazy out there, so we wanted to take a minute to check on everyone. How are you doing? We hope you and your loved ones are all healthy and staying cozy at home as much as possible. It’s been a weird week around here, mostly worrying about friends and elderly relatives, and trying to keep calm. But, truth be told, it’s also been a week of finding purpose and hope in the little things.

This is in no small part due to the many postcrossers, who have written in to let us know how much receiving mail is cheering them up while self-isolating. Many of you are staying home with energetic little ones that you’re struggling to keep busy, others just need to feel connected with the world without the anxiety-inducing frenzy of social media. Whatever your situation might be, sending and receiving postcards seems to bring people a small measure of comfort in these troubled times, and we are thankful for that.

Now more than ever, we’re also thankful to the many mail carriers out there keeping people connected. Though most postal services are still working, the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic and ensuing flight suspensions have forced many postal operators to divert or cancel some of their mail routes. This is something we’ve always kept an eye on behind the scenes… but lately, this information has been updated so frequently that it was becoming overwhelming to keep an eye on all the mail suspensions, as well as replying to your queries about them. So we created a platform to make this information available to the community, and called it the Postal Monitor.

The idea is that we have a dedicated place in Postcrossing that keeps track of all the ongoing mail route suspensions around the world, so that we can add them to the project’s algorithm. This page relies on the excellent work that postcrosser Chie (aka Chieusa) has been doing on the forum for many years now, carefully putting together all this information with the help of reports from the community. So if you know of any updates, please report them on the forum, so that they can be included.

You’ll notice on the Postal Monitor that delivery to China has been re-established in many countries, so Postcrossing is back to giving out addresses in China in the countries that can send mail there.

A few of you have also suggested the implementation of a feature that would allow exchanging postcards with your own country exclusively. This is not an easy feature to implement in Postcrossing, which is designed to be global by definition. We’re giving the idea some thought, and checking whether it would be feasible.

Lastly, let’s take a deep breath, stay calm and find ways to support and be kind to each other throughout this. Remember that we’re all in it together. 🌈