Mailboxes… the latest in exterior decor!
Americans love their mailboxes. But look out… the mailbox is about to take the UK by storm…
Watch any American film set in the ‘burbs and you’ll see a plethora of mailboxes, one outside every ‘front yard’. A traditional US mailbox tends to have a rounded top and flat bottom, mounted on a post or wall. Some look like dolls’ houses and others like bird houses. And they come in all sorts of wonderful colours and designs. Painted bright yellow, decorated with flowers or the US flag, often including the family’s name. Over there, mail boxes have personality. They say a lot about the people who live in the house; their taste, sense of humour and the things that are important to them.
In the UK we don’t tend to use residential or commercial mail boxes. Instead we struggle along with our eight inch long, two inch wide letterboxes and put up with draughty doors. If you think abouit it we must be a bit mad given the British weather. We go to great lengths to keep the cold out using ugly brush-like draught excluders and nasty rubber flaps. Our postmen and women have to ring the bell to deliver anything bigger than a fat letter, even for business mail. All of which can be really inconvenient.
So what can UK homeowners expect from a US-style mailbox? Everything from single unit boxes to multiple boxes that look like tiny blocks of flats. They come wall, post or column-mounted and you can choose from a slot or drop-box style. You can buy lovely plaques for your mail boxes. You can lock them up as tightly and securely as Fort Knox. They come in a variety of tough materials including solid steel. And you can decorate them any way you like. You add fancy house numbers and even buy weird and wonderful ‘curb decor’… the American version of garden gnomes!
Adolf Hitler once said that the British were a nation of shopkeepers. These days we’re a nation of obsessive interior decorators and gardeners… so watch out for the mailbox invasion. The mail box’s time has come!
