What to do about our mail while moving??? (Austin: apartment complexes, to rent)

[Sarah12345]

Hi, this is kind of a random question but my husband and I are moving to Austin from Chicago soon and I'm not sure what to do about our mail while we're in the process of moving. We're going to close on our condo, then move in with his family in Chicago for about 2-3 weeks. Then, we'll go down to Austin to find an apartment, which we are estimating will take around 1 week because we want to explore the neighborhoods one more time before we make a decision on location. So for about a month we wont really have an address. What do people do about mail delivery while living with family or out of hotels? Do we get a P.O. Box in Austin and forward everything there so it's waiting for us when we arrive? I've never had a P.O. Box before so I am clueless about this stuff.

Any help is very appreciated thank you!!!!!

[cmaxmor]

Can you have it forwarded to your parents house? Or the post office in the zip code where you are staying? They will hold it for you.

[XLadylawX]

DH and I rented a PO box for 6 months to ensure a smooth transition. It gave us time on the forword orders and to also manually change every thing we could remember.

[neddy]

Get one of the adress change cards and put that the first address is temp and for how long then the next address is the perm. one. Or get a po box your choice

[Idlewile]

We moved here from CO a few months ago (it was a gradual move and longer than we anticipated) and just got a mail box at one of the many UPS stores and just forwarded our mail there. Worked out great.

Once my parents used our address to forward their mail to when they moved out of state, thought it would be easier -- will NOT be doing that ever again as USPS is incapable of keeping mail separate, especially once it's forwarded again. Avoid the headache.

[N. Olikee]

We had a similar situation and got a P. O. box which we kept for over a year. This allowed us to take our time and make sure we let everyone know of our permanent address change.

[eichlerfan]

I would highly recommend getting a PO Box here in Austin. When we sold our home last year in CA we had to move into my mom's house for 6 weeks before we could move to Austin. I put in a temp change of address to my mom's house and then changed to our permanent address here in Austin once we moved. The USPS totally messed it up and it took months to get the mess undone.

[texastrigirl]

When we got a PO Box on our move we learned you can't then forward mail again from a PO Box. You actually have to call and get your address changed with whomever it is sending you mail. We get a lot of magazines so that was a laborious process.

[kbchitown]

PO Box. The easiest when you're moving around. And just an FYI: (in Austin)mail is delivered to open air mail "kiosks" in many apartment complexes as well as suburban areas. IMO we felt that this was not exactly the most secure, so we kept the po box for all mail delivery.

I can't remember, but I think you have to prove residency in order to rent a po box 'tho.

As far as any forwarding of mail...go to the USPS website for details on the items not included. But mail forwarding expires after a year, so you'll have to do the address change anyway.

[JohnA151]

Who gets * mail *these days?
we pay all our bills thou the bank which we can do from any area /state using a computer . our mail box when used is stuffed with ads and *special * offers, sometimes personal letters such as at christmas /birthday times .