A Few Words About Envelopes
I keep envelopes on hand. This is apparently unusual enough to be worth commenting on, or at least that's the impression I get from the reactions of people who see the shelf in my closet where I store them. A few different sizes, a few different types, all in their original packaging, arranged by dimension. It's not a large collection. It takes up about as much space as a couple of shoeboxes. But it surprises people.
The most common envelope, and the one I use the least, is the standard #10 — the long, narrow white one you'd use for a business letter. Everyone has seen these. They come in the mail carrying things you didn't ask for. If you've ever had to send something to a government agency or an insurance company, you've probably used one. They're fine. I keep a box around for the rare occasion I need to mail a check or send something formal, but most of the time they sit there.
The envelope I actually use is the manila. Specifically, the 9-by-12 manila clasp envelope, which is the right size for an unfolded letter-sized sheet of paper. I like everything about these. I like the color, which is the color of competence and bureaucratic efficiency. I like the little metal clasp that folds down over the circle. I like that they're sturdy enough to survive the mail without the contents getting bent. You can put quite a lot in a manila clasp envelope — a short stack of documents, a few photographs, a printed article you want to share with someone. It handles all of this without complaint.
I also keep some padded mailers for when I need to send something that could break — a USB drive, a small part, a book that I care about arriving in good condition. And a handful of the small coin envelopes, the kind that are about three inches by four inches, which are useful for storing small objects like screws or seeds or SD cards. These have nothing to do with mail. They're just a convenient way to keep tiny things from getting lost in a drawer.
People ask me why I still mail things. The honest answer is that I like it. I like the physical act of putting something in an envelope, writing an address, walking it to the post office or the mailbox on the corner. There's a completeness to it that email doesn't have. When you send an email, it just sort of leaves. You click a button and it's gone, theoretically, though you also still have it in your sent folder, and the recipient might not read it for days, and it sits in a server somewhere indefinitely. When you mail a letter, it leaves. It's in the envelope, the envelope is in the box, and then it's not your problem anymore. The post office takes it from there.
I find the post office underappreciated, honestly. The basic proposition — that you can put something in a box on your street and it will be physically transported to almost any address in the country within a few days, for less than a dollar — is remarkable if you think about it for even a moment. The infrastructure required to make that happen is enormous and mostly invisible. Trucks, planes, sorting facilities, carriers walking routes they've memorized. All of it functioning well enough that we take it entirely for granted and only notice when something goes wrong.
I mail things maybe once or twice a month. Sometimes it's a document that needs a physical signature, or something I'm sending to someone who prefers paper. Sometimes it's a printed photograph. I have an aunt in Vermont who doesn't use email — not as a statement, she just never started — and I send her photos and notes every few weeks. She sends things back. Letters, clippings from the local newspaper, occasionally a recipe she's written out on an index card. There's a pace to correspondence like this that I find calming. You send something, you wait, something comes back. Nobody expects an immediate reply.
There's also the matter of sealing an envelope, which is a small pleasure I've never seen anyone else acknowledge. I don't mean the licking kind — those are terrible and I refuse to use them. I mean the peel-and-stick kind, or better yet, the clasp-and-then-also-seal kind on a good manila envelope. You fold the flap down, you press it, and it's sealed. The contents are now private in a way that digital communication never really is. Nobody can read what's inside without tearing the envelope open, which you'd notice. There's no metadata, no read receipts, no server logs. Just paper inside paper, traveling from one place to another.
I realize this is a deeply boring thing to write about. I'm not sure I'd argue with anyone who stopped reading three paragraphs ago. But I think there's something to be said for paying attention to the ordinary objects you use regularly and having a reason for the choices you make about them. I use manila clasp envelopes because they're the right size, they're sturdy, and they look serious. I keep a small stock of different sizes because running out of envelopes when you need one is a minor but real annoyance. These are not interesting decisions. But they're made, and they save me small amounts of friction over the course of a year, and that's enough.
If you're curious: I buy mine from the office supply store a few miles from my house, in packs of twenty-five or fifty. Nothing special. The cheapest ones that don't feel like they'll fall apart. I have no brand loyalty here. An envelope is an envelope. It just needs to hold the thing and get it there.
— Kevin Vadala