Hi I was thinking about taking some of these but have no idea what to mail. What do you all normally mail and who do you mail it to? All I have done so far are some food shops (sit down and a carry out) and I am scared to try one of these. Tips?

Spend a couple of dollars for a one-pound bag of beans or rice. Weigh them before packing just to be sure of the minimum weight. You can use a family member's return address to send the beans to yourself, which will make it easy to use those beans over and over for future shipments. In that case be sure to use cash to pay instead of a card. If you like beans or rice, buy another bag before the old one expires, and cook up the old one.

If you have a nosey clerk who feels up the package and asks what's in it, you can just answer, "It's quinoa, it's hard for them to find in that neighborhood."

If you have a pet who refuses (cats!) to eat their canned food, you can ship unopened cans to no-kill animal shelters. The can labels will show their weight, so be sure to include just enough cans to meet the minimum weight requirement.

If you do lots of skincare shops where you get more free samples than you can ever use, you can ship the excess to family/friends, as long as the total weight of the package is at least a pound. You can add an old magazine or throwaway book to bring up the weight if necessary. Beware of doing this with fragrances, however, since they are for a different shipping shop.

I've done all of these.

What I mail is either 15 oz. cans of green beans or canned beets, or ancient expired dried black beans that my son found dumpster diving. I initially bought a case of beets at Aldi for 39 cents each. Then I bought a half case of green beans for 49 cents each a year or so later. 2 years ago my son found an entire case of 2 lb bags of dried black beans, all past their "use by" date, which is typically 2 - 3 years after they were packaged, so it's unlikely that they can be reconstituted easily. I pour 1 lb of the beans into a grocery bag, tie it tight, put that bag into another grocery bag and tie it tight also, and then I do it a 3rd time. put it in the box with as many bags of air, that Amazon make sure I had enough of to last my life time, until nothing moved or made noise in the box.

When I send the boxes to my shipping partners they only have to cut the label off, flip it over and tape it back down, and remove the stickers that the post office put on the box, to send the boxes back to me. After between 4 and 8 round trips, I replace the boxes, or put the old box inside a newer slightly larger box, rinse and repeat as many times as I can.

Please tell me more about your son's dumpster diving. I have watched reels and tik toks on this and it's rather fascninating what I see people find. The most recent ones I watched were those getting hauls from Ulta it was crazy what they were getting out of the dumpster.

I mail eBay items I’ve sold, or I mail cat food to friends and family who have pets.
I’ve mailed lots of Girl Scout cookies to friends this year.
I have also mailed myself the same pair of boots 3-4 times.

@Iluv2shopUSA wrote:

Please tell me more about your son's dumpster diving. I have watched reels and tik toks on this and it's rather fascninating what I see people find. The most recent ones I watched were those getting hauls from Ulta it was crazy what they were getting out of the dumpster.

I don't wear make up, don't even know how to. I do use some body spray now and then, but that's about it for girly @#$%& for me. So my son doesn't look at the make up places. He goes to a couple food service places, and "wholesale to the public" stores kinda like Smart and Final in CA. Aldi and DG are places that throw out a lot of good stuff too. Most of the big stores have compactors now though, so all the good stuff that I used to get when my kids were very young just isn't accessible anymore. I know in CA the Ralph's stores have composting trash cans that we used to get fruit and vegetables for the chickens from. And after the marked down bakery items have been out for a day, they toss them in the compost bins too. Here, not so much, Kroger isn't interested in composting here, so everything goes into the compactor.

One of the food service stores toss out meat by the case about 4 days before the sell by date. We've gotten entire NY strips, Chuck rolls, I have an entire case of pork belly in my freezer now (the smoker is gonna be busy for a few days). He brings home all of the edible food, we use what we can, he gives food away to folks that need it, and the chickens eat VERY well.

Like @BayShopper22, I also mail stuff I sold online, especially if I did not charge the buyer shipping. I have also mailed a 16oz box of Great Value pasta (Walmart brand) to a food pantry. Lately, I have mailed leftover expired OVC heath and supplements stock to people on here. Just make sure you do not try to mail anything that is considered HazMat.

Edit to comment on dumpster diving. Dumpster Diving is great for me in the winter when there are no yard sales and few estate sales to source goods. We have recycling center dumpers all around town. People will take stuff that can't be recycled. Why, I have no idea. I normally hit those up on Sunday evenings because they will empty them on Monday. I'll check back around mid-week. Just as an example, the past two Sundays I've picked up two big screen TVs with remotes. I will sell the remotes for around $20 each. Although neither TV works correctly, there are tons of parts I can sell. I also found a 1985 Emerson Microwave. You can imagine how big and heavy it is. Amazingly, it works. Still, too big to sell as is, so I will strip the parts off it and probably make $200 or more off something where my Cost of Goods is virtually $0. That means anything I make after my expense is pure profit. I have a found all sorts of stuff. One day I found a huge box of library cards, like what used to be in the backs of books to keep up with whom checked them out. Some were blank, others were used. I couldn't believe, but people buy those. So, I broke them down in lots and sold them. I still have handful left to list. Other good dumpsters to check out are ones at storage centers. People often throw out perfectly good stuff when they either can't fit it all in their storage unit, or they are in a hurry trying to pack things up and move.

Pro Tip: Wear gloves. I keep a box with me in the car. All sorts of germs out there, but beyond that, with so much fentanyl around, you never know when you might run across something that has trace amounts on it or run across drug needles. Safety first, profit second.

Oh, if anybody buys from small sellers online, please do not select the free shipping option, then message asking for your item to be shipped with the upgraded method, which is not free. I had two back to back customers today do this.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 03/27/2024 10:51PM by ServiceAward.

You can always donate to animal shelters. They always need extra towels or blankets. Sometimes newspapers are helpful to them, etc.

Thank you all for the ideas (love the cat food idea)! I am going to start with one and see how I feel about them. Also love the dumpster diving convo that has always been intriguing (sp) to me!

For what we get paid, I like to eliminate non-reimbursed expenses on every shop. The best bet is rocks and peanuts. I'm talking about the packing peanuts to keep the rocks from the ground rattling around in the package. If you never received packages with peanuts, then use plastic grocery bags to keep your rocks from jostling around in the box. The last thing we want to hear is the clerk asking, "What's inside the box?"

I mail junk food to my kids, often stuff that was 'cheap' that I bought on my gas station shops: peanuts, sunfliwer seeds, Now & Later, Mike & Ike candy, Wrigley's gum, etc. When I run out of junk food to mail and the USPS fee is too good to pass up, I'll put a hardcover book in a 67 cent mailer (12 pk for cheap at Wal-Mart) and mail it to myself. The best fees are always far enough away that I feel comfortable mailing to myself. Only once did the clerk 'refuse' to mail the package, saying no one wants a package from someone they don't know (she was questioning why the return address was the same as the mailing address). I just told her I was mailing a library book home before the due date. She accepted the package, but only after I showed her my drivers license to prove that I did live there.

I’m a teacher and I know a local young person who is a college freshman going to school across the country. She doesn’t have much contact/support from her dad/stepmom, so I mail her a care package every 4-6 weeks, often filled with things I’ve bought on other mystery shops, but also just things I see that I think she’ll like. I also mail gifts to family. I sort of look at it as free or reduced shipping for things I’d mail anyway. My work schedule makes it hard to get to post office during the required hours, so, I’ve never thought to do a bunch, but I suppose one could also use one’s work address as the return address and just put a housemate’s name as the destination (or vice versa - although my coworkers would be very disappointed with a bag of dried beans if they didn’t know ahead of time!)

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/29/2024 07:13PM by mysterioso412.

@HoomanShopper wrote:

I mail junk food to my kids, often stuff that was 'cheap' that I bought on my gas station shops: peanuts, sunfliwer seeds, Now & Later, Mike & Ike candy, Wrigley's gum, etc. When I run out of junk food to mail and the USPS fee is too good to pass up, I'll put a hardcover book in a 67 cent mailer (12 pk for cheap at Wal-Mart) and mail it to myself. The best fees are always far enough away that I feel comfortable mailing to myself. Only once did the clerk 'refuse' to mail the package, saying no one wants a package from someone they don't know (she was questioning why the return address was the same as the mailing address). I just told her I was mailing a library book home before the due date. She accepted the package, but only after I showed her my drivers license to prove that I did live there.

This is exactly the scenario I feared going to other cities and using my home address as the return address to send boxes home. It is also why I go on realtor.com and find abandoned properties and use those addresses, in the post office zip code, to use as a return address.

I use my ex husband's as the return address.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/30/2024 12:44PM by sestrahelena.

@Morledzep wrote:

@HoomanShopper wrote:

I mail junk food to my kids, often stuff that was 'cheap' that I bought on my gas station shops: peanuts, sunfliwer seeds, Now & Later, Mike & Ike candy, Wrigley's gum, etc. When I run out of junk food to mail and the USPS fee is too good to pass up, I'll put a hardcover book in a 67 cent mailer (12 pk for cheap at Wal-Mart) and mail it to myself. The best fees are always far enough away that I feel comfortable mailing to myself. Only once did the clerk 'refuse' to mail the package, saying no one wants a package from someone they don't know (she was questioning why the return address was the same as the mailing address). I just told her I was mailing a library book home before the due date. She accepted the package, but only after I showed her my drivers license to prove that I did live there.

This is exactly the scenario I feared going to other cities and using my home address as the return address to send boxes home. It is also why I go on realtor.com and find abandoned properties and use those addresses, in the post office zip code, to use as a return address.

I use my work address as the return address to mail to myself. I use a different first initial on the return address as well.

I mail random things to friends all the time! Lol. But sometimes while traveling and trying to pick up shops I am low crap what do we send!! I always find something!