You love pen paling, but the letters stay the same basically every time?!
I have been there and don’t get me wrong, I love getting written letters, maybe some goodies, but what does matter most to me is the letter, to stay in contact and see what’s going on in each other’s lives.
If you need ideas for “normal” things to include in pen pal letters, I have already made a list of them here.
But if you want to have some more ordinary ideas, this is what I’ve come up with, and am exchanging with a friend.

Most of us know about exchanging stickers, washi tape samples or post its.
How about these ideas, though:

Playlist

How about not only sending your own current favorite songs, but rating theirs.
You can rate them on a scale of how good you like them and why.
This is how I really got to know the music taste of my friend.

Tasks

Send your pen pal little tasks they have to do.
You can give them ordinary, but nice tasks like “give a stranger a compliment”, but you can also make them different.
Here are some examples:
– Find clothes in your closet you don’t like, style them so you like them, and wear them out.
– Go to a specific series, let google choose a number for the season and the episode, and watch what you got. Then interpret it for your life.

A fictional side story

Make up a fictional side story and each of you is a new, individual character.
You can make the story about every possible relationship and every situation you want.

Here is an example from my side story with a friend:
We are 2 women, whose age we don’t really know.
She is traveling around in Morocco for very absurd reasons and got lost, and now I am hearing about all her fun stories.
My fictional husband dies recently, and I now have a new husband and live with him in Transylvania in a castle that is a bit scary, and I tell her all about my experiences there.

As inspiration for content, I mostly use postcards I have collected.
Random ones that I found at some places for free and tell my story about the picture on the postcard.
My friend has to get a bit more creative because she doesn’t have a collection of random postcards, but she has had some great ideas.
She has already used printed pictures of herself or something else, or drew a map and told her story about it.
This side story might be my favorite part about our letters because it always makes me laugh so much.

Drawings

People that are good at drawing have probably already thought about sending small pictures to pen pals, but I got to admit I am not very good at drawing.
I draw like I am still in preschool, but I think it’s still fun.
To think about what connects me and my pen pal, what they would like, or just an abstract picture.
When I have time, I love to draw random pictures or color out pictures and can use them in my letters to write on the back.

Newspaper

Maybe you have a newspaper lying around (honestly, I usually don’t, but have some old ones I kept for letters) and there is an interesting or funny article in it.
Even if it is boring, you could black out words and make your own story out of it or circle words you like.
I got sent a column on “how to have a bad relationship”.
It was weird because all those tips were so bad, even though that was the sense of it.
I wrote a letter to the editor for fun to send back to my pen pal and another article of “how to get lonely” in the same style as the original column.
It was actually quite fun to write that.
The last time I wrote stuff like that was in school, but this time there were no rules and I could write it however I want.
Maybe you want to give it a try when you find something good, or just write your own column or article.
It doesn’t even have to be long.

Paper cut-outs

I received several nice cut-outs of pretty pictures from magazines in the past, and oftentimes I hung them in my room for decoration.
Now my room decoration has gotten even more random, and I love that.
A figurine in my room has a paper cowboy hat (just 2D) and it’s one of my favorite things in my room.
Doesn’t everyone have something in their room that is worthy of a hat?
You could draw any random piece of accessory and cut it out and if they want they can include it in their room decor (I would totally do it).

Incense sticks

I love a good incense stick and burn half one every few days.
You can also send them in letters, or rather half of them because they would be too long, but I prefer burning only one half at a time anyway because otherwise they make everything smell so strong.
When you send that, make sure you package it in some kind of paper.
I can tell you, from experience, that it might crumble a bit or make the rest of the letter black, but it should be safe when you wrap it in something.

These are all of my fun ideas of rather extraordinary ideas of what to send to pen pals.
Maybe you have some other good ideas as well.
Feel free to leave them in the comments.
Happy pen paling and remember to have fun at it!