Recently, there have been reports of people finding dryer sheets placed in their mailboxes. One has to wonder—what is the reasoning for this? Is it a joke? As it turns out, it is not a joke, and there is a very logical reason for why they are there.
Your local mail carrier is most likely the individual who has put the dryer sheet(s) into your mailbox. Feeling that they need to take matters into their own hands, the mail carriers are getting tired of find all forms of bugs and whatnots inside the mailboxes when they open them. It appears that this is being seen all over the nation.
Image: Taste of Home
At a post office in Oregon, a supervisor encouraged his employees to avail themselves of the boxes of dryer sheets he had on his desks, according to Chris Strickley, who spoke to the Today Show on the matter. When asked about the dryer sheets:
“Does it matter what kind of dryer sheets the mail carriers are using? You could probably use any kind of dryer sheet. I prefer the Bounce dryer sheets, but I’m sure the Breezy sheets from the Dollar Tree would do the trick.”
One has to wonder what it is about dryer sheets that works to repel insects such as wasps and yellow jackets? It seems, according to experts, what we humans perceive as a pleasant smell outright stinks to insects. We will never know what the insect world has against a nice fresh linen smell.
Now that you have been armed with this knowledge, why not place a dryer sheet, or two, in your mailbox, and save your postal carrier the trouble of enduring the daily nuisance of insects. After all, they work for us through “rain, snow, sleet, and shine,” don’t make them work through bugs as well.