The Grand Tour!

Okay! Here it is! The grand tour of my new storage building!

When I first walk in the door, there are 2 storage areas that would not be approved of by certain government agencies, so I have chosen not to show them here.  :-D

After those forbidden areas, we come to the hanging clothes. These racks were generously (and quite randomly!) given to me by my dear friend Lesley last summer. She saved our yard sale, just in the nick of time!

Believe it or not, these clothes are somewhat sorted. I'll be getting size rounders in the next couple weeks, so they'll be sorted more thoroughly then, but for now, this is good enough. Once I get caught up on my listing, I will get back to digging through the clothing racks at Goodwill, so I will need a better sorting system then anyway.

Hanging clothes

After the hanging clothes comes this mess. Everything you see here is unlisted inventory (except the saw - the baseboard trim isn't quite finished yet, so the saw has to stay until it's done). Top priority over the next 2 weeks will be to get those K'Nex pieces sorted and counted, and place an order for replacement pieces. I want to have them listed by October for the Christmas shopping season. There are some BIG bucks in those boxes.

Unlisted Inventory

Next we have my glorious workspace. For 3 years, I have been working with a 3 foot by 1 foot work surface. This huge built-in workbench is divine!

12' x 4' workbench

Next up is the shipping supplies rack. I don't totally love this, so I'm sure I'll be fine-tuning it over the next couple weeks. My main complaint is the stack of boxes that hold my mailers. And really, my problem is that they are out of order. lol. That's a pretty easy fix, if I ever remember to do it. Since I took this photo this morning, the large bag of packing peanuts has been  moved to the loft. The blue bins at the bottom right of this photo will go up in the loft too, but it still has a few building supplies and extra insulation up there. Once that stuff is gone, the rest of this stuff will go up there.

Shipping supply center

This shelf is kind of bare. I see that I need to focus on toys during my next couple inventory trips. The Febreze doesn't belong there, nor does the Miche shell that is on the toy shelf. The top left box is completely full of Miche shells. The horizontal boxes in the center hold wall hangings. The next box is a huge set of books that is currently listed.

Second shelf: large Miche shells that don't fit in the box above, shoe creams/etc, a vintage hair dryer with WWE action figures on top of it (obviously, because who doesn't store their WWE action figures on top of their vintage hair dryer?); and a small pile of clothing that is listed but needs small repairs before I can ship (a missing button and an original tag that is just safety pinned on that I need to retag - both repairs will only take a few seconds, so I really ought to just get them done...)

Third shelf: toys, a random bottle of Febreze, and a rogue Miche shell.

Fourth shelf: 2 stacks of books that I have listed on Paperback Swap, and a box of odds and ends that need more parts before I can list them (ex: a lone Pyrex lid, a set of Mario NES games that's missing one game, one set of Scrabble tiles, ... you get the idea...)

Fifth shelf: 3 giant boxes full of Babysitters Club books. It's a sickness.

Sorry about this horrid photo. Morning sun ...

Top shelf: games, more WWE action figures (Hulk Hogan in the original box! lol), and a Mega Bloks set that I have sold several of for very good money - patiently waiting for Christmas.

Second shelf: random odds and ends

Third shelf: my glasswares and pretty shiny things

Fourth shelf: two stacks of turntables and 4 or 5 stacks of books that are currently listed on eBay

Fifth shelf: a couple odds and ends, and a whole lotta books that are sets that I am working on.

Bottom shelf:  empty! whatEVER will I do with that? Shop to fill it up, perhaps?

The loft:

And this ... this lovely lady is my eBay homegirl. That hat was in our welcome packets at eBay on Location last week. I was wearing it this evening, just because I was too lazy to put it away. I found myself in my building with it on and knew she would be the perfect place to keep my hat. She shoots daggers at me while I'm working, but she makes me smile anyway :)

eBay on Location!

Well! Just as I suspected, Tina, Lesley, and I had an absolute ball at eBay on Location this week. It was a whirlwind and entirely too short, but we had a great time. Oh yeah ... we learned some stuff too. :)  I'll talk about that stuff later.

Here we are at the Seller Celebration dinner. It was so loud and chaotic! I missed most of the conversation that night. Delicious dinner though! 

Griff! 

When we discovered the elite Top Rated Sellers Only Lounge, we felt very special. So special, in fact, that I forgot all about good posture....

We had a little time to spare after the conference on Thursday, so we strolled through downtown Philly for a minute or two until we got scared and ran and hid in Burlington Coat Factory. But we managed to catch some fabulous city sights first ...... 

In some other, most excellent news! I am officially moved into my new building! I have been working out of it for 3 days. There are still just a couple minor things that need done, but my part is complete. The window and door trim need installed, and one piece of baseboard trim needs installed, and 2 more lights. But it is completely set up the way I want it. I've been doing all my packaging there, and mostly just standing and smiling at it.

It's late, so I don't have pictures, but I'll try to remember to get some this week.

Plan C

I'm working on a new (temporary!) business model. Which reminds me. I cannot beLIEVE I didn't mention that my building came! It's been here for a week and a half. We decided to completely finish the inside, so my husband is working hard at insulating and running wires for electricity. He'll be doing drywall, hopefully next week.

So, back to my business model. As you all know, and are likely experiencing for yourselves, business is slow right now. Very slow. I have a HUGE mess in my eBay room. We had a yard sale a couple weeks ago. I took ALL my eBay clothing off the hangers and off of my clothing hanging racks in order to use them for our yard sale. After the yard sale was over, I didn't bother putting the clothing racks back in, using the excuse that the building would be here any day now, and I would just have to take it all apart again to move it to the building.

Well, I didn't take into account the fact that the building would need a couple weeks worth of work done before I could move in.

I am about to bare my soul here. I know I have shown you photos of my eBay room before, but it looked nothing like this:

It's hard to get a good feel for the mess, based on this picture. But let me tell you ... it's about hip high. It goes literally from wall to wall to wall. The mess touches those boxes in the back by my red dress form. The mess touches those boxes in the upper left corner. There is a pathway from the door to the table (the white thing on the far left). It's a nightmare. These are my piles of listed clothing that I threw on the floor to use their hangers and hanging racks. It was a bad BAD idea to not hang them back up again. Aside from the obvious nightmare of trying to move and work around the piles, do you have any idea what it's like to find something when it sells????

So anyway ... bringing this all back to my opening sentence.  I am trying out a new temporary business model. These clothes have to go. I love selling clothes. They can bring an incredible profit margin. But many of them I have had since January, February, or even earlier. I paid so little for them that I can slash my prices and still make good money on them.

Besides the issue of mess and storage, I am in desperate need of cash flow right now. So my new temporary business model is this:  I have put all of my clothing 50% off in my store. I've started with just a 7 day sale to see how it goes. I'm hoping this will help with 2 goals:  #1 - clear out some of the mess and stale inventory.  #2 - get me some cash fast.

So far, so good. I have had 7 sales today. 5 of them have been 50% off clothing. Of course that means that now I have to find those 5 garments in that mess, but I am grateful for the sales. I am anxious to see what my sale does for my business over the next week. And I might even leave that sale on until I am ready to move to my building. Who knows?

Where, Oh Where Has That Sold Item Gone?

Oh where, oh where can it be??

Sarah from Vancouver emailed me last week:

With your hundreds of items, how do you find it again after you listed it and it has been sitting around for a while?

I am very fortunate to have an entire bedroom devoted to my eBay inventory. I don't have to store any of my inventory in bins. It's all right out in the open, where I can see it.

I am also pretty lucky to have an obsessive memory. I just plain remember where I put stuff. And because it's all out in the open, I see all of it every day. It's always fresh in my mind where things are.

But to give you more details, I'll describe how I have everything stored. (No pictures, because I use certain storage items in ways that they are not intended, and I don't want to post pictures and get caught for doing that and get in trouble ...)

Shoes: I have open-ended shoe boxes stacked floor to ceiling along one whole wall. Each box is numbered. When I list a pair of shoes, I put them in one of the boxes and write the shoe box number in a note on my listing. When a pair sells, I can easily see what box number they are in, and it takes me 2 seconds to find them.

Clothing: I have 2 hanging clothing racks set up in the center of my room. I have all my clothing hung there. They aren't sorted very well - just by basic category (tops, skirts, pants) I need to get them sorted by size or something, because it usually takes me about 10-15 seconds to find the right garment. Time is money, people! Gotta get faster than that! :)

I also have shelving units on 2 of my walls. I have all of my denim skirts, jeans, pants, and shorts stacked on one of the shelves. I'd love to have them all hanging up, but those racks only hold so much.

I have a shelving unit full of open-ended boxes that was originally for shoes, but I've moved all of those to my original shoe wall and am now using this unit for sweaters. I roll the sweaters up and slide them into a box. I'd rather have them hanging, but they are very bulky and take up a lot of hanging space. Also, rolling them prevents those goofy hanger marks in the shoulders.

Any longer garments (dresses, coats, jackets) are hanging in the closet.

Plush: I have a smaller floor-to-ceiling wall of open-ended boxes that I had originally built for shoes, but now that my shoe inventory is declining, that whole wall is empty. I use it for my plush. I don't have to dig through bins to find what I need. They're all plainly visible. Of course, that means they are plainlyg visible to my kids, so from time to time, I have to chase some of my plush down from other rooms in the house, but for the most part, it works well.

Books: I desperately need a better system for my books. I just pile them on a shelf as I list them. Again, in no order whatsoever.

Housewares (mugs, casseroles, coffee carafes, etc): They are all on the bottom shelf of one of my shelving units. They only take up one shelf, so it's really easy to find what I'm looking for there.

Microwave Turntables: When I list a turntable, I write on a post-it the number that's on the turntable. I stick that to the turntable (sticking out from the side like a tab) and add it to the stack on my (very heavy-duty) shelf. That way, when I sell a turntable, I don't have to move and sort through 30 turntables. I can just glance over the post-it notes that are sticking out and find the right one.

Board Games: They're just stacked on the very top of my shelving unit. Easy to see and find the one I need.

Toys: I sell very few toys. They're all just on one shelf.

Odds 'n' Ends: They go wherever I can fit them. I do occasionally forget where some of these things are, because it's not a real category, so they don't really have assigned places. But usually I'm able to remember.


That's pretty much it. You can see that my 2 best tips for finding inventory is to store like inventory together (have a section for mugs, or a section for jeans, or whatever...) and keep as much out in the open as possible so it's always right there. If you've got the space, get that stuff OUT of the bins! It's so much easier to find stuff when it's not tucked away in bins.

Working Through the Mountain

I've been getting so much listed! You know I have all these boxes and boxes of fresh inventory to get listed. I decided to start with the homeschool material, because it's the bulkiest and heaviest, but it's also the easiest to list. Snap one picture of the cover. Use a short description template. Change the details and done. I got 12 listed Friday, 13 listed Saturday, and 20 listed tonight. That's one box of curriculum. There's still 2 more half-boxes of curriculum over there.

I'm cracking down on myself. I WILL get through that pile as quickly as possible. Next up I'll do the basket of clothing, because it's also pretty quick and easy. I'm concerned about what might happen to this stuff if I leave it out here too long. If I let my guard down, my three-year-old will get into it all and ruin it. Ack.

I know I promised pictures of stuff as I get it listed. Do you really want to see pictures of 40-some homeschool books? Use your imagination :) But here are the listings, if you're really that interested. A couple of them were my own materials, but most of them are from Melissa. (Hi, Melissa!)

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Last summer, I set a financial goal for myself. I wanted to save $10,000 by December 2012 so we could hire someone to completely finish our basement. We desperately need as much upstairs living space as we can get, especially as the kids get older. We have 4 kids sharing 2 bedrooms right now. Our oldest really needs her own room. No 12 year old girl should have to share a room with her 4 year old sister. So the plan was to get the basement finished and move my eBay stuff downstairs.

There are a couple hitches in this plan. #1 - no matter how well the basement is finished, there will always be dampness. I can't risk ruining my inventory by storing it in an always-damp basement. #2 - once my husband graduates from nursing school, he plans to get a job nearer to our church (an hour away) and we hope to move closer to that town. Why sink $10k into a sub-par basement, only to move 2 years later?

So there's a new financial goal - save $5,000 by the end of this summer. I really don't foresee any problems with that, as long as I stay focused and quit blowing my money on stupid stuff. Ahem. I'm going to buy a monstrous storage shed. My current eBay room is 10' x 10'. I've got my eye on a 14' x 24' shed.

My $5,000 goal should be enough to buy the shed, baseboard heat, and a window air conditioning unit. I'm very, VERY excited about this goal. It's less expensive (yay for my bank account!), it'll happen significantly sooner than the basement would (yay for my daughter!), and we can take it with us when we move (yay for common sense!) I'm looking forward to having all my eBay mess OUT of our house (yay for everyone's sanity!)

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Today's sales have been great! Very steady, all day long. I've finally found the magic price to get my Florsheim shoes moving. I've had quite a few pairs just sitting here for over a year. I sold 3 pairs in the last week and a half, after I lowered my price. $35 is the magic number. Yay for getting rid of old inventory! (Lots of celebrating in this post)

I'm so sick of this bowl. SICK of it! I sold a set of 3 nesting bowls in this Gooseberry pattern awhile ago for $70, so I thought for sure this single large bowl would do well. Nope. I've tried EVERYTHING to move this stupid thing. Sales, high prices, low prices, best offer, free shipping. Nothing. I'm sick of it. It was time for it to go, so I knocked the price down to $10 + shipping and it finally sold. Stupid thing.

Here's one pair of the Florsheims that I sold today. The other pair was burgundy loafers, and they're going to Canada.

I bought this set of Goosebumps books awhile ago at Goodwill when the whole set was the half-price color. I paid $8 for all of them. I just didn't feel like messing with them and taking pics and describing the condition, so there they sat (in my way on my packaging table, I might add) for weeks. I finally listed them the other day and they sold already this morning. Oops. Underpriced. But they're gone, and I'm totally happy with the price I got for them. They're actually headed to a town 45 minutes north of me.

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I also had two large shoe cream orders today - one for 10 jars to the UK and one for 11 jars to Washington state. My stock is getting dangerously low on that stuff. I'll need to place an order this weekend, I suspect.

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Guess that's it. This time change has us all so messed up. We have an ugly, over-scheduled day tomorrow, so we're taking a planned no-school day. Too bad I can't spend it being productive, rather than running all over creation for appointments and meetings. Ugh.