Business was slow Friday at the Lawrence post office, but Judy Raney wasn’t fooled.

“This is the calm before the storm,” said Raney, the city’s postmaster. “Everybody’s out buying everything today. They’ll start showing up Monday to mail it all.”

Lawrence’s 150 postal employees make 36,000 deliveries a day; Raney said business doubled during the holiday season.

“This and Valentine’s (Day), we get a lot of packages — people mailing gifts because they live someplace other than where their loved ones live,” she said.

Raney offered tips to Lawrence residents sending Christmas gifts by mail:

• Don’t wrap the box in brown paper, or with string.

“Like the rest of the world, we’re mechanized and that can get caught going through the machines,” Raney said.

“If they’re sending Priority or Express Mail, we do have free shipping products here, boxes they can use,” she said. “If they’re using parcel post (regular mail), they should use as sturdy a cardboard carton as they can.”

• Even though you’ve marked the recipient’s address on the outside of the box, write it on a mailing label and slip it inside the box, too. That way, if the box is damaged — and the mailing address is lost — postal workers can determine where the package should be delivered.
• Send gifts early.

The U.S. Postal Service Web site suggests that gifts can be sent by regular mail as late as Dec. 15, but Raney disagreed.

“If they’re going to send (by regular mail), that’s seven to 10 days normally,” she said. “They need to allow, at Christmastime, at least 14 days.”

Gift-givers with deeper pockets can wait until closer to Christmas, Raney said. Express Mail, for example, is guaranteed to reach the recipient within two days. But it also costs more: It costs $17.85 to send a one-pound package by Express Mail, but only $3.85 otherwise.

“The price you pay to send it will determine your cutoff dates,” she said. “It’s what you wish to invest.”

Raney described the Christmas season as hectic but satisfying.

“I think there’s a lot of satisfaction in helping people get things mailed,” Raney said, “knowing that it’s going to somebody as a Christmas gift.”

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