Behold … the mailboxes of the WORLD, as sent in by The Art of Doing Stuff readers.
This is easily the weirdest post I’ve ever done.
Last week I asked readers to send me in a picture of their country’s communal mailbox. Then I spent a lot of time explaining what I meant. Not the mailbox at the end of your driveway, not the mailbox beside your front door where you get Dwell or People Magazine delivered. I meant the mailboxes you’d walk to to mail a letter.
Once that explanation was out of the way, the pictures came flying in. My hope was to get mailboxes from at least 10 countries. And I did! Although I’m pretty sure Laos is a made up country. Almost positive in fact.
I’m a bit iffy on Finland too.
But … from The Art of Doing Stuff readers to YOU …
The last picture was sent in by Steve, a reader whose kids watched a video of fainting goats and then killed themselves laughing. After that everything became a fainting version of itself. One morning after Halloween they went outside and found these on their street corner. Fainting Mailboxes.
Special thanks to Eleanor (in New Zealand), Maggie B and Karin (in Germany), Mel (Danish mailbox), Kim (English mailbox by way of Switzerland), Nathalie (in Scotland), Roxana (from Romania), Caroline (R2D2 mailbox in Chicago), Mel (in Switzerland), Natalie (outside of Tokyo), Cathryn (travelled to Kyoto, Japan), Terrie (travelled to Laos), Jenni (in Finland), Virginie (in France), Christina (in USA), Beth (travelled to China) and Steve … (fainting Goats)
Sorry to everyone who got their pictures in too late to be included in the collage. Poland, Australia, Netherlands, Tel Aviv, etc. … you’ll be missed.
You can expect to see more posts like this in the future. With so many readers spread around so many countries it seems stupid not to take advantage and have you produce all of my content for me.
Wait … what I *meant* to say was, With so many readers spread around so many countries it seems stupid not to take advantage of it and use it as a tool to take a look at the rest of the world. Yes. That’s what I meant.
Have a good weekend!
Karen … was re reading this post from a few years ago. Have you done any other readers submissions on other subjects that I missed? Just curious if I had missed them. Thanks.
I don’t think anyone has added anything recently. :) ~ karen!
I don’t think I made myself clear. Have or could you pick(ed) a different subject and asked for reader submsubmission? Such as some od the suggestions of personal mail boxes … manhole covers … fire hydrants?
Ah! Yes, that’s a possibility. :) ~ karen!
I’m super late to this party, but I wanted to drop a note to tell you how awesome this is and I look forward to seeing more of these “around the world” posts with pictures!
Thanks Kori! You just reminded me of them. I’ll try to get one up in the next couple of weeks. ~ karen!
I love the R2D2 box. I’m not a huge star wars person, but I just think that is great.
Bill – Agreed. ~ karen
somehow I had missed this post before today! I loved it! and I look forward to something else like this!
ha! Fainting… from laughter!
YES! The Canadian mailbox is the shiz! I snagged a few pics of it in Montreal and fell so in love with it. It even delivered my postcard to Germany so quickly, lol!!!!!
Love the Fainting Canada Mailboxes!
Wow! Denmark gets the prize for graffiti-mailboxes. And at first, I thought Finland was “McDonald’s mailboxes.”
Do man hole covers! They are amazing all around the world. In my city (Bergen, Norway) they have a beautiful scene of the city’s unesco listed warf and they are beautiful!
Love this idea (loved the Scottish box the best!) and love the idea of photos from around the world. My suggestion is vending machines…my husband and I lived in Japan for a year in the late 80’s and you wouldn’t believe the stuff they sold in their vending machines…could be very interesting (not to mention racy!)
Also in Ontario, washed milk bags can be used as boil-in-the-bag meal containers for camping trips :)
Fun to see all the variety of mailbox designs.
Mailbox tipping used to be a classic Halloween prankster move in rural B.C. – every year we would tiptoe out of the house to see what havoc the local hoodlums had been up to and every year the mailbox was on its back. I won’t go into all the other “tricks”, don’t want to give anyone any ideas!
What I find amazing about this whole mailbox thing is that you thought it up. I often wonder at people’s thought processes, you know, how a thought comes into the mind and starts bouncing around like the little shiny ball in the pin ball machines. It finally hits enough spots and this wonderfully creative thought rolls out. In other words how do you get from point A, mailing a letter to point B, having a blog about the mailboxes of the world. You never fail to amaze me. Just to keep you humble though, who was it that said that there is a very thin line between genius and insanity? Was it old Sigmund F? Anyhooo it is a very good blog idea. I think I hear a call for more!
Gayla T – As with many of the funniest/best ideas on this site … the fella came up with it. Stupid fella. ~ karen
Scotland and rual England get my vote. As for bagged milk we bought it for years here in BC, called them milk bladders. Didn’t seem weird at all in fact there was less container waste and you could freeze it easier. Anyone remember back in the 60’s when margarine came in bags? The margarine was white and inside the plastic bag was a thingy that had yellow dye in it. You had to massage the bag to break the dye thingy and massage it till the margarine turned yellow like butter. How yummy is that??
My fav was the Scots mailbox. Still can’t comprehend buying milk in bags, never seen that in this part of the U.S. Maybe there is no udder way to package it in parts of Canada. ha ha!