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Home > Guides > Pause mail while traveling
To pause mail delivery while traveling, use a hold mail service: USPS Hold Mail and Canada Post's hold service store your mail at the post office instead of delivering it, so it never piles up in your mailbox. Request it before you leave, pick a start and end date, and collect the bundle when you return.
When you file a hold request, your carrier gets a notice to keep everything addressed to you at the post office instead of bringing it to your door. Letters, bills, packages that fit, and even mail that arrives while you're away all get bundled together and held under your name. When the hold period ends, you either pick the bundle up at the counter or have the carrier deliver the whole stack in one go.
One thing people get wrong: a hold doesn't stop the mail, it just moves the waiting room from your mailbox to the post office. The mail keeps arriving on schedule. That's the point. A full mailbox doesn't just look sloppy, it tells anyone watching that nobody is home, and it can overflow to the point where the carrier flags your address. A hold keeps that signal hidden.
These solve different problems, and picking the wrong one creates a mess. Forwarding changes your address with the postal service, so mail starts arriving at a new place. A hold keeps everything in one pile at the post office until you return.
| Situation | Use | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Away for a week or two, coming back to the same address | Hold mail | Everything waits in one bundle; no address changes to undo later |
| Away for a month or more but need mail as it arrives | Forwarding to a temporary address | Mail reaches you while you're gone instead of waiting |
| Moved permanently | Forwarding (permanent) | Forwarding catches stragglers sent to the old address for months |
| Short trip, nothing time-sensitive expected | Either, or neither | A trusted neighbor grabbing your mail works fine for a few days |
Also worth knowing: forwarding isn't perfect. Some senders, especially banks and government agencies, don't honor forwarding orders and their mail gets returned instead. A hold doesn't have that problem, because nothing is rerouted. And when a hold ends, anything you never picked up typically gets delivered in one batch, so nothing vanishes into a forwarding black hole.
File the hold at least a day or two before your trip starts, not the morning you leave. USPS lets you request a hold online, by phone, or in person at the post office; Canada Post offers its hold service online or at a retail outlet. Either way, have your dates ready: the first day you want delivery stopped and the day you want it resumed.
Two details that trip people up. First, holds have maximum lengths, so a two-month trip may need a second hold request filed partway through, or a switch to forwarding. Second, packages too big for the counter shelf may still get a pickup slip rather than being held with your letters, so check whether a big parcel is expected and make other plans for it. Finally, remember to cancel the hold if your plans change and you come home early: otherwise your carrier keeps skipping your house and your mail sits at the post office for no reason.
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