Tsaiberspace

Home is never having to leave home (except for groceries and work), having a laundry machine downstairs, and a mailbox at the front door. Having finally gotten a small stackable washer/dryer in our garage (my first craigslist purchase ever), I set about improving our mailbox situation.

In San Francisco houses, it is common for the mailbox to be in the garage (the mail carrier drops your mail into a mail slot facing the outside). In a good setup, this mailslot is actually in the wall next to the garage door, and the resident has a box on a table or something right behind the mailslot. In our house, the mailslot is in the garage door itself.

The mailslot-in-the-garage-door setup isn’t a problem for most people, because it is very common in space-cramped San Francisco for people to park on the driveway or on the street, and to use the garage for storage. People who use their garage for storage can just stick a box on a table behind the mailslot.

We use our garage to keep one car, so that isn’t an option. There are a few solutions:

• When driving home, open the garage door (with the automatic garage door opener). Peer over the top of the dashboard and look for mail on the ground. If you see any mail, get out of the car, pick up the dirty mail and put it somewhere, then come back out, get in the car, and drive in to the garage. Or, if you don’t see any mail, drive in to the garage, and accidentally drive over the mail you didn’t see. Pick up the mail, dust off the tire treads from the envelopes, and hope that no CDs or anything were broken.
• Tape/nail an old cardboard box (like from Amazon) behind the mailslot. This mailbox catches the mail and keeps it from getting dirty. When the garage door opens, the mailbox rises to the ceiling and turns 90° sideways; the mail falls out and flutters down to the ground. You will see the mail for sure as it flutters down to the ground, so you won’t drive over it and break anything. If it is a windy and/or rainy day, the mail can flutter outside and get wet. Also, you still have to get out of the car, get the mail and put it somewhere, and come back out and drive in.
• Build a better mailbox. I nailed an old Amazon box behind the mailslot, but I first trimmed one of the top boxflaps and only nailed the boxflap to the garage door; the boxflag acts as a hinge and leaves the mailbox free to swing at an angle (maybe 30° from vertical) when the garage door is up and open. The box is strong enough to hold a reasonable amount of mail without tearing away from the garage door. The angle is sufficient to keep the mail from falling out of the box down to the ground. The box is light enough such that if the nails fail, or if the flap breaks, it won’t kill anyone who might be standing underneath.

My home mailbox technology has steadily progressed up through the third stage described above. I hereby release the design described and pictured above to the world at large, license-, royalty-, and patent-free.