This morning Dear Husband helped me to take eight boxes to the Post Office to be sent off to our troops in Iraq. It's quite an experience to do this for the first time. One of the ladies in our exercise class spearheaded this effort last year, when her son was stationed overseas. She took six or eight boxes to the Post Office and discovered that she would have to open and list their contents, the weight of the items, and the value, on a customs form, before they could be sent.
Needless to say, she guided us in the preparations this year, and we met after class to begin the work. I even remembered to bring my kitchen scale! We were very short on time that day, so I volunteered to finish the boxes in my car, and get them to the post office. Remember, I said I was short on sleep? (See the next entry) I was up until 1:00 doing the customs forms.
I finished addressing the customs forms this morning, and we headed out. I thought I had all the boxes checked, and everything was ready to go, when the clerk asked me where I wanted to put the addresses on the box. Rather than hold up her work on weighing the boxes and getting the customs sheets set up, I used labels the clerk provided, and wrote all the Sender and Recipient information once again, for the eight boxes. I can tell you I was really happy to see this project to it's finish.
We hope these boxes arrive before Valentine's Day. We thought it might perk up some of the troops, and ease their days. At least they'll know that someone from home cares about them.
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Comments (2)
I'm getting ready to get a few boxes ready to ship off too. Glad for the heads up. I guess I'll google around and see what all I need to do before I show up at the post office. That's a cool thing for your group to do, to send those packages to the troops.
Posted by kacey | February 3, 2008 7:56 PM
Posted on February 3, 2008 19:56
Kacey, I hope what I had to say will help. Remember that you need to know the total weight of the items, and their cost. You have to fill out a customs form that can be tricky. On that form you have to have the NAME of the recipient. Just the battalion info isn't enough. And, you might want to check the box that says "Treat as Abandoned," because the box will be left there, rather than returned to you. This is important, because if the box is returned, they will charge you postage, unless you are mailing in the Priority Flat Rate boxes.
When you fill out the information on the sender, if you are mailing to someone other than a person who knows you personally, you'll need to add a line of explanation. For example....
Buffy
from John Doe's mother's exercise class
Buffy's address
John Doe was the serviceman to whom we were sending the packages.
They want to be able to recognize that these are legitimate packages, and not bombs. TO play it safe, we even sent an e-mail so that they were expecting the boxes.
It's a lot of work, but SO worthwhile. Let's pray we can stop doing this soon!
Posted by Registered User
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February 4, 2008 1:35 PM
Posted on February 4, 2008 13:35