Hey you guys!! I hope everyone has had some fantastic holidays and business ventures so far throughout the first half of this beautiful year. I’d like to bring something up today to everyone that may be something you haven’t yet thought of preparing your small business for. Natural disasters! They’re everywhere and seemingly nowhere at the same time. Unless one’s hit you directly, you’ve likely overlooked them, (and therefore all causes of preventing damage from them!) If you’re a small business owner you’ll know that this often comes with a slew of challenges from day one, until like, forever. However, if you’re a small business owner that is also a reseller, you’ll know that just one of those giant challenges happens to be where the heck you’re supposed to put all of your inventory!
Being a Quantity Seller Has Its Downsides
Of course, you can go the route of a hobby reseller, that sells only particular items or items at specific price points, which of course can limit the amount of items you’ll need to actually store on hand. Or, you can choose a site that allows drop-shipping, which in turn can leave your home completely devoid of on-hand items altogether! Ahh the bliss…
Obviously though you’ll know if you’ve been around for awhile, that I am neither of those mentioned. I am embracing my status in the world as a reseller of quantity and am darn proud of it.
BUT. Quantity sellers have a problem that the other options do not. Where to put all of the incoming and outgoing inventory!!?
Although we’ve moved the 4,000+ items around multiple times throughout the last 7+ years inside of our home, garage, and shed, it still poses new issues every time we missed something to prepare for, and you guessed it, with the last giant amount of rain that came our way, a mini disaster did in fact take place!!
The Flood, The Inventory, The Damages
Although we store most of the items that could be damaged off the floor, there’s some things you just can’t prepare for. We woke up in the middle of the night a few weeks ago to a garage full of inches of water and immediately went to work during the late night to fix the obvious issues as best we could.
Luckily the hubs has no fear and went straight out into the dark and stormy night to clear the drains at the bottom of our driveway and create new ditches with a shovel and headlamp that we use for hiking (check out our sister site Habitual Balance for more hiking related content if you’re interested!), while I stayed inside in the dimly lit garage to try and use old blankets and sheets we’ve sourced (another benefit to reselling and cleanouts!), to soak up some of the puddles of water everywhere.
A snow shovel was my new best friend as I swooshed all of the rainwater down the drain in the garage that was overflowing more by the minute. After that fiasco, I continued to try moving anything in reach that was in the line of fire of obtaining water damage. Luckily we were able to catch it all soon enough and work quickly as a team to save the inventory in the garage. Only a few placemats and small objects (and blankets!) were damaged in the process.
A good lesson was learned that night, that we forgot to prepare for one additional problem! Mother Nature!
Related: The Reselling Crossroads: Finding Balance Between Quality and Quantity
Inventory Shelving is a Must
Because of this mishap, we’ve begun searching for additional shelving to store more items farther up off of the floor in case of future situations like this one, and have lifted anything wood like furniture up onto other items that can carry their weight.
If you haven’t yet tried your hand in the reselling world with furniture, I highly recommend giving it a shot! Keep in mind that this will take up substantially more space, but as long as it’s priced comfortably, it will continue to move. Try using one of the following platforms for selling on!
- OfferUp (personal favorite)
- Facebook Marketplace (very popular!)
- Craigslist (oldie but goodie)
We’ve had great luck with shelving from Lowe’s or Home Depot, but anytime that we come across miscellaneous shelving units during our cleanouts, we are sure to take it back to the inventory storage area and use them to their full advantage!
One tip I’d really like to mention that we didn’t use while starting out with shelves…be sure to label them!!!
We’ve begun to sell a lot more hard goods this past year and therefore our space has needed to expand for storing because of that. We do try to stick to a budget for expenses, and since shelving is much more expensive than bins, we’ve been using larger, sturdier bins to store hard goods with a number on the outside.
For breakable items, we use a label maker to implement the number system as well, (you could use letters here, too!) but label each shelf as one so that we know where to pull from when the item sells and aren’t stuck looking around forever. (Speaking from experience here!)
Related:Why You Should Reorganize Your Reselling Inventory
Protect Your Inventory From Flood Damages
If you haven’t already thought of everything to prepare your storage room for these types of situations, I highly suggest thinking about the what ifs and planning ahead to ensure your livelihood is well protected from multiple kinds of mother natures unexciting experiences.
Take into consideration if you’re in an area that floods more frequently, or if you have something stored too close to outlets that will cause a fire, or if you have clutter that can cause dust buildup (especially if your items are located in your home!)
We’ve invested in a great air purification filtering system as well to make sure we aren’t constantly ingesting in germs or dust or pet hair that is brought into our space, and we also are sure to close doors to bedrooms, bathrooms, and the like before bringing things in or moving things around.
I’m hopeful these tips have helped you consider some new options for your storage system or have brought up ideas on how to prepare for future situations that may cause havoc with your inventory. If you have any tips, tricks, or stories about todays post, feel free to drop a comment down below so we can compare and contrast!
Thank you for being a part of this blog and a part of our journey.
We appreciate you.
Thank You For Reading “Rising Above the Flood: How We Successfully Moved and Organized Our Inventory”!
We would like to extend our sincere gratitude to all those who have supported us thus far on our journey. That includes today’s blog post about how we successfully moved and organized our flood damaged inventory! Have you dealt with flood damaged inventory? Let us know. We deeply appreciate your ongoing readership. We hope that you will continue to visit us in the future. Please feel free to share any comments or suggestions below.
We’re always open to receiving advice, suggestions, or even hearing your own related stories! We make it a priority to remain active in the comment section and will respond to any questions promptly. We invite you to explore more helpful tips and tricks on Our Blog Posts Page while you’re here. Don’t forget to subscribe to stay updated on our future articles!
P.S. (This will also snag you a super sweet discount code to shop our store on eBay!) If you are struggling with your journey, Rooted Drawers is here to help. Allow our team to work closely with you for an ENTIRE quarter, side by side. You’ll come out at the end feeling refreshed in your business with a new mindset and new goals to crush!
Get in touch! We look forward to making your dreams in the world of reselling come true.
Talk to you soon!