Can You Mail It?

We Just Canned Get Enough.

In the young lifespan of this column, we’ve already noticed a trend in that we kind of get a kick out of mailing things inside clear plastic baggies. And why not? It is kind of funny, after all, to imagine our postwoman’s face as she sees what weird things we’ve given her to handle this week. But repeating the same methodology over and over expecting different results sounds an awful lot like the definition of insanity, no?

So we went back to the proverbial drawing board and tried to think of other facets of the system to test. In this week’s mailing — a can of tomato paste — we went back to the well of unconventionally-packaged items. We went with tomato paste because it was the lightest canned good we owned, of course, and therefore would be the least expensive to mail.

Even though we’ve read stories of other folks unsuccessfully attempting to mail canned goods in this manner, we were still pretty sure with our success rate that we’d indeed be getting our tomato paste back.

We guess something much more unusually-shaped is in order to test down the line.

Item: Unopened can of tomato paste.
Estimated Value: $0.50
Cost of Postage: $3.15
Method: We removed the label and replaced it with a piece of white computer paper, which we taped to the can using store-brand Scotch tape. The address and stamps were placed directly onto the paper.
Days to Deliver: 3 days.
Condition Upon Arrival: Immaculate. The can was completely un-dented.
Running “Can You Mail It?” Success Rate: 80 percent.