I decided to tackle the basement storage room. It probably hasn’t been cleaned out for 8 years. It wasn’t a good storage room because there was no shelving. There was one dresser that I used for storage and some totes, but I didn’t really have a good system for storage. This is probably why you couldn’t walk in the room! I don’t know about you, but even a space out of sight that is unorganized, causes me stress!
I also knew that I needed to come up with a more efficient way of shipping product. As my social media accounts have grown, I get more and more requests to ship items. Most of my customers are far away and I can make more sales if I simply ship. So shipping has become one of those things that takes up a lot of my time because I haven’t perfected my system. I know that in order to be successful at my business, I’m going to have to become more systematic with my shipping methods. And for my sanity I can’t keep using my dining room table.
The storage room already needed to be cleaned out and I thought this was the perfect place to create a shipping area. I started out with emptying the whole room and putting all of the stuff in the room next door. The room next door has a Ping-Pong table, my kids’ craft table, and a dresser full of their craft supplies.
I asked my dad to build some shelves for the totes, to help keep things off the floor. We used salvaged materials and I had free labor, so no money was used on this project. I put shelving on one of the long empty walls. The electrical box is on one wall and the door is on one wall. Across from the shelves, I decided to have dad put up a counter top bar. This space will stay empty, except when I am packing items.
Of course, we had company over before the storage room got finished! The basement is the “Kid Zone,” the Ping-Pong table, air hockey table, and the gaming systems are all down there. So everything I had emptied out of the storage room had to be put back in the storage room quickly. Because we were in a hurry, and I was busy, my husband undertook the task of moving everything back into the storage room. I had hoped he would organize all the junk as he put it back into the storage room, but that didn’t happen! The room was back to not being able to walk in. After we had the company over, I had to pull everything back out to start the organization and purging.
Most of what was in the storage room, shouldn’t have been stored there anyway! I took things to the thrift store, I took things to my store, and I condensed our Christmas stuff down into fewer totes. I also condensed all of our scrapbook stuff/keepsakes and put it into smaller totes. Then I organized all of the boxes and packing supplies I use for shipping.
So now that it’s all organized, I’m excited to actually put it to use! Every Sunday I do a Live Sale on Facebook. This will be the first time that I have the opportunity to sell some things online. Those items will need to be shipped, so I’ll get to test out my shipping counter and see how it goes. I’m sure like everything else, there will need to be tweaks after I’ve used it a few times. I will figure out what I do and don’t like, if I need another shelf for supplies, or if I need to invest in a chair, etc. Past experience with organizing, is that I first think about how I want to organize something, then I actually have to use it to see if what I thought was going to work actually works. The key is to tweak it if it’s not working.
It might not look organized, but everything has a home and is off the floor!
Click HERE for another post about organization in the series…Work Smarter, Not Harder.
