Volunteers help assemble holiday care packages for troops overseas for the Connecticut nonprofit Boxes to Boots, in this undated photo shared by the nonprofit on social media in October. (Boxes to Boots via Facebook)
(Tribune News Service) — A Connecticut nonprofit sending holiday care packages to overseas military had many of those packages end up in an unexpected and unwanted place on Wednesday: back at its offices.
Every year, Boxes to Boots, a Berlin, Conn.-based nonprofit, packs up and ships hundreds of boxes containing candy, snacks and toiletries to troops around the globe. This year, volunteers gathered at New Britain High School on Nov. 15 to pack more than 1,800 care packages and ship 1,139 to 30 units spanning more than a dozen countries.
But after mailing them out, the nonprofit got back three-quarters of their care packages (884 to be exact) with the boxes marked return to sender, and the label “toiletries” circled in red ink. The last quarter of the care packages cleared customs and arrived at their destinations.
“There was no explanation, just the word ‘toiletries’ circled with a red pencil,” Gauvin said. “No one can tell us what’s wrong with our boxes.”
As of Friday, Gauvin says Boxes to Boots has not received any more information from the United States Postal Service on what was wrong with its labeling; the group has never had shipping issues before. More than 100 boxes that have been returned are still unaccounted for in the mail, and the nonprofit has paid more than $7,600 in shipping costs on the incomplete order.
More frustrating for Gauvin is the lack of communication from USPS over what went wrong and why some of the boxes were turned away while others passed customs. Gauvin says all the boxes were labeled identically.
“If we had known there was a problem, we would have immediately hopped in our cars and driven to New York with our machine and relabeled those boxes so that they could get over to our service members in time for Christmas,” she said.
Now, the window has passed for the boxes to arrive in time for the holiday.
Gauvin, who has more than quadrupled the nonprofit’s work since taking over in 2017, says she has reached out to Sen. Richard Blumenthal’s office for help, and that she is hoping he is able to broker a resolution with USPS.
According to a spokesperson for USPS, U.S. Customs likely rejected the boxes because the labels were incomplete and did not provide sufficiently detailed descriptions of what was contained in the packaging.
“USPS also requires a detailed description of each item in a package on the customs-declaration form: what the item is, what it’s made of, and its purpose — for example, ‘men’s cotton shirt’ rather than the general term ‘clothes,’” USPS spokesperson Amy Gibbs wrote to CT Insider.
According to Gibbs, stricter requirements around the labeling of exports have been phased in by Customs and USPS over the past few years, including updates to the policy in April 2023 and September 2025 that now require every item, including small personal shipments, to provide a “clear, specific description” on the customs form.
She provided an example chart of acceptable and unacceptable labeling, contrasting unacceptable labeling “gifts,” medicine,” with more detailed descriptions “one scented candle, remote-controlled toy car, cashmere scarf” (for gifts) and “painkillers (ibuprofen), antiviral spray medication” (for medicine).
Gauvin says the group would be happy to resend the boxes with more detailed labeling if someone would tell them where their labeling fell short, so as not to have a repeat customs snafu.
Until she gets an answer, she’s primarily concerned with how this impacts troops spending Christmas away from their families, including a young Marine on his first tour who reached out in the fall requesting a care package, writing to Gauvin that he was lonely on his deployment.
Gauvin says she “proudly” packed a box for the Marine, and shipped it to him, but now it’s sitting in her office in Berlin.
“It’s so disheartening because I will pay that extra money to get that sent, whatever we need to do, but no one’s cooperating with us,” Gauvin said. “I would think everyone would want to be bending over backwards to support our military right now, and that’s just not the feeling I’m getting.”
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