A Little Mail Club for Two

How to start a private correspondence with someone you love.

We send each other messages all day.

Little updates. Photos. Memes. “Look at this.” “Guess what happened.” “Are you home yet?”

Most of them disappear into the stream almost as quickly as they arrive. And they get lost. We rarely have an analog archive of our relationship.

So I started thinking about a different kind of communication.

Something slower.

Something you can hold.

A little mail club for two.

Not a real club. There are no members, no subscription fee and no complicated rules.

Just two people who decide to send each other something through the post.

It can be anything

A letter, obviously.

But it doesn't have to be.

It could be a photograph you took because it reminded you of them. A tiny drawing. A page torn from a magazine. A recipe. A list of things you want to do together. A strange object you've found. A pressed flower. A postcard. A little collage. Or a tiny zine.

You could even send something completely unnecessary.

Actually, those might be the best things to send.

The point isn't to create something impressive.

It's to say:

I saw this and thought of you.

Make up your own rules

The nice thing about a private mail club is that you get to decide what it is.

Maybe you send something once a month.

Maybe every Sunday.

Maybe whenever you have something worth putting in an envelope.

You could make a few rules together:

01 — Make something. It doesn't have to be good.

02 — Don't send it digitally first. Let the other person discover it in the envelope.

03 — Keep it small. One envelope. One little thing.

04 — Don't overthink it. The imperfect things are often the nicest.

05 — Keep everything. At least for a while.

Give it a name

This is completely unnecessary, which is exactly why I think you should do it.

Call it something ridiculous.

The Two-Person Post Office

The Secret Mail Club

The Slow Post Society

The Very Small Postal Service

Or just give it a name that means something to the two of you.

Write it on the envelope.

Make a little stamp for it.

Maybe even design your own logo.

Make the envelopes part of it

You don't need fancy stationery.

In fact, I'd probably use whatever is lying around.

Old paper. Brown envelopes. Pages from an old book. Scraps from a previous project.

Draw on them.

Stamp them.

Stick something strange to the front.

Make each envelope look like it has travelled somewhere, even if it's only going across town.

And then wait

This is probably the strangest part.

You actually have to wait.

You can't see the message immediately.

You can't watch the little “seen” notification appear.

You can't send a follow-up five minutes later.

You just put the envelope in the post and let it go.

And then, one day, there's something waiting for you.

Something made by someone you love.

Something that exists outside your phone.

Keep the little things

After a while, you might end up with a small collection.

Letters.

Photographs.

Drawings.

Tickets.

Bits of paper.

Tiny publications.

Things that didn't seem important when they were sent but somehow became important because you kept them.

And maybe that's the nicest thing about making a private mail club.

You're not just sending things to each other.

You're making a little archive of your relationship.

No algorithm.

No audience.

No need to post it anywhere.

Just two people, a few envelopes, and the occasional excuse to make something.

Maybe that's enough.