Saturday, January 31, 2009

Neurotic

I get this great satisfaction from packaging up items that I've sold in boxes. I don't do anything fancy, although I have some great ideas for future packaging. I just bubble wrap the breakable parts, then create a little nest in the box for the item. I make the nest from old magazine pages, or more recently, the 2007 Ikea catalog. Ikea would approve, don't you think? It's more environmentally friendly then styrofoam peanuts. Then I tuck the items inside, wish them well and then fills the rest of the box up with more crumpled magazine pages and tape it all up. I don't know why I find this so satisfying. It just is.

Also, in case you don't know about this, you can get free flat rate and priority mailing boxes from either eBay or the post office. It costs a little more to ship priority mail than to ship first class, but you have to ship priority in order to get delivery confirmation anyway, which is always a good idea. I typically pay for delivery confirmation at the post office because I'm not quite to the point where I trust myself to figure out postage, but another great tip is that if you are paid through Pay Pal, you can print your shipping labels there and get FREE delivery confirmation. This is on my to do list for the future. Random Anny says that she doesn't even bother to print her shipping labels on label paper. She just prints it on regular paper and tapes it right on the box. Sounds like a good plan to me!

1 comment:

Anny said...

Thanks for the link :)

I love packaging stuff too and have the World's Lightest Box filled with styrofoam, bubble wrap and tissue paper from packages.

A bonus to printing your own postage is that it provides a link to your tracking number in paypal and also immediately sends the tracking number to the buyer. Don't stress printing the wrong postage - if you're under you can always pay the difference at the PO.