Cheap Moving Boxes 4

Here’s a question for you. Have you ever had to pack up and move a family of 9 all the way across the country? No? Well, I have and let me tell you this, it was one of the craziest, hardest, most annoying, and hilarious things my family and I have ever done. Every single one of us was in tears at one point or another, including my 6’5 former military husband. (Hey, even Chuck Norris would cry being stuck in a van with 7 screaming children for 20 hours.) It was something I would never want to do again but wouldn’t actually trade the experience. Mostly because through the move I gained a plethora of wisdom on how to handle a stressful experience, like moving, with grace, poise, iPads, and about 100 gallons of coffee. And if you’ll let me, I would love to share with you some of that wisdom of how to handle a stressful move.  

 

First thing you must always do is plan ahead before even packing a single box. You want to have a packing method in place, otherwise you’ll just wind up throwing a bunch of random stuff in boxes, which is fine for getting it out of the house, but it’s a nightmare on the other end. So, I am going to share with you the best packing method secret out there. Get yourself a notebook, a pen, and about a million cheap moving boxes. Then assign each room in the house a number. I started with 100. Each box in that room will then be assigned a number within that value range. Then, instead of writing on the box everything you put in there, you’ll instead write in the notebook the box number and everything that’s in the box. Then all you have to do is write the number on the box, and nothing else. 

 

For example, let’s say you assign your master bedroom the number 100. The first box you then pack will be box 100. In it goes sheets, pillows, and your duvet cover. You would then mark in your journal, “Box 100. Sheets, pillows, duvet cover.” After that box is full, you’d move on to box 101, 102, etc. This may seem like a lot of work, but when you get to your destination, not only will you know where everything is, but you’ll be able to tell the movers exactly where all the boxes go by saying “All 100 boxes go in the master bedroom.” Viola! Your nightmare of unpacking just ended.  You’re welcome. 

 

Aside from that, which is honestly the reason I’m still a sane person, you need to make sure you’re staying organized with your time. You can wait for the movers, but the movers won’t wait for you to finish packing all those cheap moving boxes. So, ask for lots of help (yes, it’s ok) and try to have your packing done at least a day in advance before the movers arrive. If you need to sleep in the house, just have your mattresses on the floor and use sleeping bags. (We just told the kids we were camping, and they loved it.) As far as food, get takeout and use disposable everything. (Shh, don’t tell mother earth I said that.)

 

The task of moving doesn’t have to be the death of you, your spouse, or your children. You just need a solid packing method, be organized with your time, make sure the kids have something distracting them at all times, ASK FOR HELP, and don’t strangle your spouse… trust me you’ll need them for the drive. 

Shipping Supplies 2

Question. Who loves cupcakes?! Answer. Pretty much everybody on the planet, and if you don’t you’re either a robot or have never had one. I mean who couldn’t love cupcakes? They are literally a cake that you can hold in your hand. Not to mention they’re delicious and come in every flavor and variety you can possibly think of. They even have a TV show dedicated to them, and I can’t think of too many foods that can make that claim. The best part about cupcakes though is where they’re made. Bakeries. (Well, at least the best ones are.) And our cupcakes are no exception. They’ll pretty much blow your mind. But, one thing that we’ve had trouble with recently is the whole 2020 COVID pandemic. Unfortunately we had to close our doors to our walk in guests and move strictly online for an extended period of time. (Thankfully we can now serve pre order and pickup guests) And for a bakery that specializes in cupcakes, that’s been a challenge to say the least. Because we lost a lot of our upsells. Like coffee and other non baked food items.  

We did however stay in business and that was mostly due in part to our ability to ship our cupcakes to our regular customers. That however was also not without its challenges. First we had to figure out our online ordering system. Before it was more catered to those who wanted to make appointments for tastings or those who had giant orders that we needed time in advance to fill. But, after we got the kinks worked out, we had a good flow of steady customers, some of whom were ordering daily. 

That brought another challenge. Shipping our cupcakes and other baked goods. We never really had to think much about it before, but after a few of our orders not reaching our customers in the same way they left our shop, we had to reevaluate the shipping supplies we were using. And our thin cardboard boxes that we use for normal pickups, did not do the trick. Instead we had to invest in heavy duty boxes that we placed our more flimsy (yet cute) boxes inside of. This took care of the baked goods getting damaged in transit, but it upped our shopping costs. So, that leads to even another problem, how do we handle the shipping charges? Especially when the shipping outweighed the cost of some of the orders. So, what we decided to do was take the hit, initially. We then started a campaign to incentivize our customers to have higher cart sizes and that way we could throw in a shipping charge that made sense for covering our costs and customers didn’t feel as though they were getting cheated. (I mean who really wants to spend more on getting the cupcake to you than what you spend on that actual cupcake?) And thanks to our loyal customer base, we were able to not only stay afloat during the pandemic, but we actually grew in our profit margins. So all in all, we can say win-win. 

However, there is one more slight problem. Now that we have been able to open our doors back up and our customers have come back in waves, our shipping orders have gone down dramatically. Which, actually is a plus for us, but now we have a ton of extra shipping supplies sitting in the back that we have no idea what to use. But, I suppose that’s not such a bad problem to have after all.