I have come across this question several times on instagram and other snailmail friendly sites The question was “what is a letter, large envelope or package?” Upto what dimensions a letter is considered a letter or when it becomes a package!!
It is all a lil overwhelming (I know it was for me when i first started snailmailing!!) to take in as the US Postal service takes into account the weight as well as the dimensions simultaneously to determine it’s postage. For International letters and packages, apart from the categories of the mail types, it also has country groups labelled as 1,2,3…9.
It took me a month or so in 2018 to read all the detailed booklet info that was available on their website. For our help, USPS website has a great tool to check the postage using their price calculator tool that can be accessed via the link posted below:
Now, this is a hack i use which i saw on few blogsites. I use this method of deducing the mail type and its correct postage. Here in the video, you can see i have a mail template sent to me by the Stamps.com You donot need that template to determine what category your mails fall into as you can make one at your home using cardboard pieces.
Take two rigid cardboard pieces and make a slot of 1/4” width and 3/4” width respectively. Keep the length to an atleast of 8”. To determine the postage, i pass my letters through these slots and then refer to the chart shown in one of my pictures. This is just a easier way to determine the postage for your mail piece at home while the best way would be to let the post office deduce it for you when you take the mail pieces to them.
This is mainly for the letters and large envelopes. As for packages, i found the USPS price calculator works the best.
Happy Snailmailing!!
Artful Geet Creations 