Cohousing-L Mailing List: Mail/Package Delivery Area

[Edwin Simmers (edwinsimmers]

We feel very lucky here at Bellingham Cohousing to have a mail room in our 
common house that was designed by McCamant and Durrett (Katie and Chuck). It is 
perhaps the most-used room some days where we run into each other spontaneously 
and keep up with each other’s news. Our mail usually comes during our daily 
coffee time from 10-11 so there’s lots of opportunities to mingle.

 We were lucky to be able to convince our local postmaster to not require us to 
get our mail at one of those streetside neighborhood cluster mailboxes. Perhaps 
part of the inducement for the common house mail room was that the letter 
carriers (or whatever they’re called now) can use our common house bathroom and 
heat up their tea water in our kitchen and eat their lunch.

We have the standard metal-door boxes for each unit, although most of us have 
taken the lock off so we don’t need a key. Right below our mailboxes are a 
couple of bins for paper recycling so folks can toss their junk mail without 
having to take it home first. On the other wall of the mail room are coat 
hangers for visitors, a bench for them to sit (but mostly used to hold packages 
from USPS) and bins for recycled batteries, plastic, envelopes, etc. There’s 
also a shredder in the mail room for community use.

We also have cubbies for each unit surrounding the mailboxes - they are used a 
lot for leaving each other messages, distributing handouts, and returning 
everything from small tools to lost glasses. Our cubbies are about 2 1/4 inch 
high, 16” deep and wide enough for a flat piece of paper. They are used a lot. 
I’d suggest that they should be at least another quarter-inch high so even 
people with fat hands can reach inside for those little things that always end 
up at the far end.

The third wall has a window with a windowsill where we leave lost keys and 
other discovered treasures. Below that is a bulletin board where we can post 
event notices and postcards from traveling friends.

Send me an email and I’ll reply with pictures of our mail room and a fuller 
description.

Ed Simmers
edwinsimmers [at] bellcoho.com




> Mail/package delivery area      <– 
> <http://lists.cohousing.org/archives/cohousing-l/msg48016.html> Date –> 
> <http://lists.cohousing.org/archives/cohousing-l/msg48018.html>    <– 
> <http://lists.cohousing.org/archives/cohousing-l/msg48012.html> Thread –> 
> <http://lists.cohousing.org/archives/cohousing-l/msg48019.html>
> From: Katie Henry (katie-henryatt.net)
> Date: Fri, 8 Apr 2022 14:17:48 -0700 (PDT)
> We're under construction and recently had to redesign our mailboxes to 
> include 
> more USPS package delivery boxes. 
> 
> In the previous plan, we had a little cubby for each home so residents could 
> leave things for each other. With the new plan, the cubbies have been shrunk 
> down to mail slots, 10" wide x 14" deep x 1-1/4" high. This is big enough for 
> a 
> piece of mail or a magazine, but not much else. 
> 
> Should we even bother with the mail slots? Or should we omit them and get 
> some 
> rolling carts with hanging Pentaflex folders or some other solution? In my 
> experience, cohousers often need a way to leave bulkier items, such as books 
> or 
> small packages, for their neighbors and mail slots wouldn't be very useful. 
> What do you have in your common house and does it work well?
> 
> Katie Henry
> 
> Heartwood Commons - Tulsa