I’ve been counting.
Any of y’all… for your individual, personal mail… get anything delivered via USPS mail more important than a property tax or zoning notice?
My wife got a replacement Social Security card in the mail last week; the week before that, she got a copy of her birth certificate in the mail. (Both are needed in order for her to get a Real ID card, and both were things that she had specifically requested.)
Otherwise, our ratio is probably similar to yours.
I pay for a UPS mailbox. I think it’s worth it, I don’t have to worry about packages getting stolen or deliveries arriving when I’m away, and physically removing the mailbox outside your house appears to be the only way to stop the tidal wave of USPS-delivered junk.
I think it comes back to political issues with funding USPS. If they were properly funded as a public service, they would not need this as a critical revenue stream.
Yes, cards and letters from family and friends. Wouldn’t want to do without those!
We do get greeting cards in the mail, for birthdays and our anniversary, mostly from my mother and my mother-in-law. And Christmas cards, though the number of friends who send those out has dwindled in recent years.
I don’t think I’ve gotten an actual letter in the mail in decades, other a couple of friends who include “year in review letters” in their Christmas cards (and even those, I’m pretty sure, are a “letter” that they print out and stick in every card that they send out that year, rather than a letter to me, personally).
Sometimes that junk mail is useful. We get pizza coupons every couple of weeks for the take-and-bake place that’s less than a mile from our house. Free pizza! Who doesn’t like that?
I still get several of my monthly bills via snail mail. I may be a luddite but I like having paper copies that I can file away for future reference. And yes, I know I can print hard copies from an online account. Having the paper copies mailed at their expense saves me ink and paper (in addition to a luddite I’m a parsimonious old grump as well 
) At least… uh… two? I think? of my monthly utilities are so old school that they only send out paper invoices and only accept cash or paper checks as payment. So each month on payday I mail out several paper checks to cover some monthly expenses, just like Grandma used to.
We get the usual birthday and Christmas cards each year as well. I even have a Doper on my Xmas card list! ::strut::
Consider yourself lucky. When the pandemic hit our local JW’s had an epiphany: they could send a handwritten letter each week instead of knocking on random stranger’s doors! So for several months Each. F*****g. Week. we would get a letter from the local Kingdom Hall. It was indeed handwritten and hand-addressed. “Do you need healing during these troubling times? Did you know that this is all part of God’s divine plan? We can help you find meaning and understanding! Come visit us this Sunday, masking optional!” That shit got old at the first one. Thankfully it seems to have stopped now.
I also got tired of of the stupid political fliers. No, I don’t want to become part of Idaho. Stop spending your money annoying me by telling me how Salem is wasting theirs. Morons.
My only complaint with the current postal service is that I have to walk across the street to fetch my mail rather than having it delivered through a slot in the door. Such inconvenience!
I’ve been able to get nearly all of my bills converted to electronic statements and payments. The one outlier at this point is the village, which will only send out the bills for the quarterly water/sewer/garbage collection fees, and the annual vehicle stickers, via snail mail. At least I can pay them online, so I don’t need to send a check.
Bills; cards and letters; the occasional official notice (e.g. that my driver’s license needs to be renewed and I can do so by mail); and some of the physical things I order get delivered by the USPS.
So how does that work? Where does all that junk mail go if not into your UPS mailbox?
My local city elections are piggy-backing off of tomorrow’s state primary election. For at least the past two months I have been getting shitloads of mayor and city council candidate flyers. Even a few judges. Also got my mail in ballot and voter information booklet, so at least those two were useful and important.
Every week we get multiple home improvement coupon books, stuff like contractors, plumbers, roofer, window installers. I think the books are competitors, but the same ads run in all of them.
Every 3 weeks is a big blue envelope full of coupons. I’ve learned to open it, pick out the coupon for the local Tandoori buffet place, and toss the rest. Every week is 5 supermarket circulars. (Vons, Jons, Ralphs, Food4Less, Aldi)
My aunt, who is in her 80s, still sends handwritten letters, even though she also uses email.
Annually, the useful stuff is car registration notice/tags, and the property tax bill. And reimbursement checks from my health insurance, because for some reason they won’t do direct deposit, even though I submit my expenses electronically on their website.
If your name and UPS mailbox address have got on junk lists you will still get some stuff that has your name and address on it. But I think only if they are paying full regular postage. In practice, I only get two or three things a week.
Whereas USPS when delivering to regular mailboxes give mailers a bulk rate.
In the last month, I can think of my license plate registration sticker that came in the mail and my credit card company needed to send me a large amount of money that, for whatever reason, had to be as a check rather than direct to my bank. Admittedly that was a pretty unusual month for me, mail-wise. Usually it’s just the quarterly water bills and whatever packages come USPS instead of UPS/Amazon/FedEx.
Do you still check your USPS mailbox every day just in case, and what does a mailbox from UPS cost a year?
No, I physically removed it. That is the only way to stop the junk. That doesn’t stop me getting packages delivered to my home address when I’m around. And the amount of urgent paper mail I get is pretty much zero.
I think my UPS box is about $300 per year. But bear in mind that this includes accepting and safely storing packages, and they will forward mail when I’m travelling at cost. I try not to abuse their limited space, but my local store are really nice people, I know them all personally, and they have even accepted stuff like furniture for me to pick up from them later when I just couldn’t work out a schedule to be at home for the delivery.
My W-2 and 1099 forms during tax season. Yes, they are all available online now, but tax documents are the one thing I still like having a hard copy of, and if I can have them sent to me rather than having to use my own paper and toner, all the better.
Other than that, there is my vehicle registration sticker once a year.
Besides that it is indeed pretty much all junk.
Bills. Notices from garbage and water co. My ballots. Car reg. Books from Amazon and others.
A few around the holidays and my birthday.
I occasionally get important stuff in the mail, usually in the PO Box I maintain for important/business stuff but sometimes the box attachment to my home.
I’ve been using the junk mail to line the bottom of my birds’ cages for years, saves me having to buy newspapers to do the job.
OP: there are ways to substantially cut down on the amount of junk mail you get. See:
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=stop+junk+mail
That’s right: In California, and in some other states I’m told, election ballots come by mail. I think that’s pretty important.
Besides that, my car registration just came. Also a few bills that aren’t electronic. A Costco rebate.
And packages. Lots of packages.
COVID tests. Sometimes Amazon sends things via USPS.