Anything beyond a long weekend, and we have the cat sitter coming over every other day to take care of the critters and make sure that Happy Fun Cat hasn't managed to burn the house down yet. The cat sitter also brings the mail in from the box for us.

I assume that this topic is US centric. In other countries mail does not play such an important role.

just before relocated out from US >6 years ago, my wife opened virtual mailbox in Nevada, where we have my DL issued, and redirected all paper mail there. While all bank/CC statements are electronic, there are couple other paper stuff which once-twice per month is delivered there. The service scans pages so we can decide either to trash content or shipped that mail to US or international address.

At my overseas address while I have mailbox in my apartment, nothing is delivered there - I have PO box which appx 80% of paper mail goes and for the rest everything is sent to my office address where receiption takes them and puts into employees box at premises. This setup works fine.

Personally I would trust mail to my office much less than to my home. I also still get a fair amount of paperwork to deal with my father's estate, so there is usually something in there every other day or so I need.

Certainly wouldnt be considered appropriate getting personal mail delivered to the office; the occasional small parcel from Amazon is just about acceptable but thats it.

In the UK things are different because other than modern flats the "mail box" is typically a hole in the front door and so it can a) hold unlimited mail and b) little chance of theft of mail. We instead have a different concern however in that the undisturbed pile of letters/papers seen through a window or such is a sure sign that someones away on holiday (or dead/ill in their property) and so increases the risk of a break in.

Whilst you can get the official post held there is plenty of trash put through the door by other companies which cannot be stopped and so pausing your mail doesnt really stop the problem. To be honest the only people that do tend to be those going on a month plus length trip.

What does come through the door is 99% junk. I have a couple of accounts/insurances that insist on sending paper records for some reason but the vast majority is all online/by email... though this does cause the occasional problem with proof of address requests.

I was warned by my po box postmaster that if I didn't fill out a mail hold and something came in by express mail, it would probably get returned to sender. They are only allowed a couple of days to deliver or return express mail.

I live in condos. One has a doorman/concierge so there is no limit. The other is normally good for 3 weeks before my locked safe deposit mailbox gets full.

We travel quite a lot, anywhere from a week to 4 months or more.

We have a house sitter who picks up the mail and brings it to the house, adds water to the pool, turns on faucets, flushes toilets, rotates what lights are on etc. She walks through the house while the pool water is running. We usually have her come twice a week, but if it is really hot like now it would be three times a week.

When we are gone for a long period I leave three bins on the island for mail, "probably important", "maybe important" and "junk".

All bills and other important stuff are electronic except for our MUD water bill. They are trapped in the last century. I get my newspaper online daily.

I don't know why I am worried about leaving mail in my mailbox. Twice this past week he didn't deliver the mail and left it all the day after.

The longest I've let mail pile up was about two months.

How do you handle mail from the IRS in a timely way?:D:p

I haven't lived/worked in the US for awhile now, so no IRS stuff in the mail to worry about. :p