Somebody asked me: What do you ship in?

A note from a customer has prompted this blog post. She is trying to reduce her use of plastic (admirable, also a goal of my family this year) and wanted me to be sure to ship without using plastic.

Which made me think. (Also made me chuckle, she paid with a credit card, aka “plastic,” and the play on words made me smile all day.)

I do ship in plastic about 70% of the time. Plastic does this neat thing, it keeps your fabric items dry and protected from the shipping process in a way that cardboard just cannot. It’s lighter, meaning cheaper shipping for you. It’s easy and compact to store.

But it’s also not what I reach for first. In order, here’s how I prefer to ship your items:

- Used cardboard boxes or other used shipping containers. Sometimes, however, I save these for customers who have chosen DHL or UPS. These shipments are often larger than the poly envelopes I have, and DHL won’t take packages in USPS boxes, lol. (And, um, that would be illegal.)

- USPS Priority mail, I reach for USPS Priority boxes first. Sometimes I don’t have one that’s a good size, sometimes I’m all out. But if I have one that will fit, it’s what I use.

- Polymailers. These are my standby, and what most orders go out in. They’re inexpensive, lightweight, waterproof, durable, and available in many sizes. I almost never run out, because I can store about 1000 in one file cabinet drawer, whereas cardboard boxes present more of a storage issue.

So if you’ve ever wondered about the logic that goes into what I reach for when I ship your item…now you know.