Every time I finish a letter, I experience difficulty folding it neatly to fit within my small 6.5” X 3.63” envelopes. Obviously, the perfectly folded letter would be a 1/4 inch shorter around than the envelope size (6.25” X 3.5.”) My varying folding attempts became either too large to fit within the envelope, or too small and bulky, leaving considerable unused envelope space. The perfect fold became an obsession, so I studied how to fold a standard 11” X 8.5” sheet into a 6.25 X 3.5 packet.
Plan One: Fold sheet in half horizontally, thus reducing the 11” height to 5.75”,” and then fold into thirds vertically, which reduces the width 8.5” dimension to 2.83.” Three folds that fit, but the finished packet proved much too small (5.75” X 2.83”) — too much unused inner space, almost one inch around within the envelope. I needed more efficiency.
Plan Two: Fold the sheet in half vertically, reducing the width from 8.5” to 4.25”, and then folding in thirds horizontally. No Good, as the result yielded a 4.25 X 3.66,” — even smaller than Plan One.
Plan Three: Use a ruler. Fold the sheet a measured 2.25” inches in from the right margin, reducing the paper width to 6.25,” (a dimension easily slidable within a 6.5” envelope) and then fold the remainder into thirds. Unfortunately, though meeting the length dimension, it exceeded the vertical space by 1/4,” thus requiring folding over part of the envelope flap to cover the insert. Though it worked, it created an unsightly annoyance in exceeding the envelope’s inner space.
Plan Four: Fold the bottom margin a measured 4 1/2”, thus reducing the vertical dimension to exactly 7,” and then fold the remainder in half again to reach an optimum 3 1/2” width, using just two folds. Thereafter, fold the right margin inward 2 1/2” to fit within the envelope. Plan Four works, efficiently uses all the inner envelope space, but unfortunately, leaves an imbalanced bulge on one side. By now, desperation has set in.
Plan Five: Fold the paper along its diagonal, connecting the opposed corner points, yielding a pair of slightly misaligned triangle sections, which can be improved by refolding each triangle lower corner point to meet the opposite horizontal line, looking more like an Origami project. To complete, fold the end points toward the opposite margin. Walla! In just four folds, it almost fits! All that remains is to snip off the two small corner point pieces and the letter is completely tucked within the envelope inner space, with no bulges or wasted space. To be sure, the fold lines appear a little odd, but the letter may be unfolded easily. As far as the small snippets, no one ever writes anything in those corner point spaces anyway.
My study has reached the perfect solution: Buy larger envelopes!