My Shipping & Receiving Zone (& Library)

I am a firm believer in organizing by zones. I don’t know if this is a current philosophy that other people subscribe to. I kind of made it up, but it works well for me. I’ll be gradually sharing these zones with you until I’ve shared my whole office. We’ll start off with my shipping and receiving zone.

Yeah, that sounds all “big-business-doesn’t-apply-to-me,” but give me a couple of minutes and I assure you, it will make sense for your small business.

I have both a studio and a separate office. The studio does not contain anything that is not studio related. It’s a small space, so I utilize the real estate there as well as I can. Unfortunately, my office is also on the small side, so the organization there must be strict.

I have found that most of the “clutter” that takes over the office is shipments and mail coming in, orders waiting to be processed and packaged and waiting for delivery to the client or the post office.

So, I knew I needed to have an area for these types of activities that would keep them more organized. Hence, a shipping & receiving area.

My area for these activities are confined to a 3 shelf bookcase and a set of 4 stacking bins as well as a few other baskets/containers.

Shipping Receiving

1. Outbox – Orders that are ready for pickup by clients
2. Inbox – Orders that need opened, packaged, invoiced, etc
3. Inventory – extra order-type inventory that I have procured for samples that need an inventory adjustment before being used.
4. To be filed – yep – this is the bin that is always full!
5. This basket is for all the items that are ready to be mailed and just need taken to the post office. I transfer the contents to those cool re-useable grocery sacks with handles on errand day to make them easier to handle.
6. Print Packaging Black Boxes – 4×6
7. Print Packaging Black Boxes – 5×7
8. Wallet Packaging
9. CD Packaging Envelopes
10. CD Packaging Trifolds
11. CD Packaging CD Hubs
12. Print Packaging – Gold elastic bands for black boxes.
13. Bin of small padded envelopes for CD mailing. Standing beside it are a variety of larger catalog envelopes & USPS Priority envelopes.
14. Bin of cellophane & packaging tape
15. Print Packaging Black Boxes – 8×10 & 11×14
16. Packaged Wootness t-shirts
17. Padded T-shirt envelopes.

Because my office is so small, an adjacent area is also pictured, which is for:

Reference/Library

A. DVD Instructional Videos

B. Software CDs

C. Purchased Photoshop Templates on CD/DVD

D. Cans of air for cleaning keyboard & PCs (probably will be re-homed & something more pertinent will go in here later)

E. Magazines (Professional Photographer, Photoshop User, etc)

F. Books

G. Basket of items that do not belong in the office and need returned to their proper homes.

H. More books

So – there you have it – a small, organized area that will hold your basic packaging needs and keep the flow of materials in and out of your office in a more organized manner.

For those of you that have all the fancy packaging (i.e. bags, bows, tissue paper) this probably won’t work for you, but an additional space for those items would supplement this system nicely.

I hope you found this of some help. Please feel free to share photographs of your own space. Send your photos & descriptions to christine@wootness.net and I will feature some of the best ones in future articles.