Clean Office Tour 2013

Want to visit Lizzie*Kate? Here's your chance!

CAUTION...this is a working office (translation: warehouse)...so be prepared and wear your comfy shoes.

We've been doing an all-office cleanup for the past few weeks. We seem to have hit a snag...busyness and business has a way of getting in the way. But here's the (relatively) clean part of Lizzie*Kate international headquarters.

The door's open...so come on in!  The weather has been so mild lately, we've had the windows open in the afternoons...go figure! Someday I'll forget to close them in the evening and we'll have a snowy interior the next morning.

As you walk in the front door...OOPS...there's a big pile of freight that arrived this week. Next to it (not shown) is a pile of freight that's going out to needlework shops this afternoon. Here's the challenging part of the whole "clean office" thing. There's always stuff coming and going!

Turning to your left...OOPS...there's another floor obstacle. It's a nice big pile of US Mail crates. These are ever-so-useful around the office. Every day we fill one with outgoing orders and tote it outside to sit next to the mail box. I'm pretty sure we're not the favorite stop on the mailman's route! We also use these totes for all sorts of other projects (but keep that a secret, please). 

Continuing to look left, here is the "heart" of the office...our shipping area!  The shipping table sits right in the middle and is surrounded by shelves of inventory all around. Alan figured out this system when we first built our office, and it has been so practical! Below we'll do "close-ups" of the shelves behind the table. But first...

Under the shipping table are all sorts of supplies...boxes on this side and bubble-packages on the other side...and TAPE...lots of TAPE!

On top of the table, you'll see more shipping supplies, a couple scales, and a drawer thing full of charms and embellishment packs. Notice the standing roll of shrink wrap (to left of charm drawers)...love that stretchy stuff! It's the best way to tame slippery Flip-its and Boxers.

Here's a shot of the shelves BEHIND the shipping table. They're all labeled and (recently) dusted!  The left section and part of the center section hold our entire Flip-it inventory - 128 different Flip-its and Double Flips in all!  WHEW! The other smaller boxes hold Flip-it embellishment packs.  That's a lot of 1" x 1" embellishment sacks....and we try to keep them all filled.  Of course, when a drawer is empty, that's always the one someone orders!

Here's a close-up shot of the other wall. Our inventory of chartpaks wrap around the corner. That's Alan's desk peeking out behind and to the left. Actually, it's some file cabinets with a board on top, but we call that a DESK.  These boxes with the smiley face openings in them originally held one title. Now we have to gang up several titles in one box to have enough room. The NEWEST title gets it's own box...until the next title comes out!

Can you recognize these? These are the BOXER boxes!  From B01 through B42, they're all there! You can spot the most recent Inspiration Boxers on the bottom shelves? Notice the missing box on the right hand side? That Boxer box has been moved to the assembly area to be re-stocked!

Finally, here's the Snippet shelving area. Once again, from S01 to S106, they're all shelved, with the oldest titles on the bottom. We've had to consolidate these drawers once again, putting 4 titles per drawer on the older inventory. We keep BIG boxes of all of these in a separate area. That area (sadly) hasn't been cleaned yet, so it's not ready for prime time viewing!

Finally, this area hasn't been clean yet, so no white glove test here!  This is the KIT area, right behind the other shelves we've been showing you. On the top part are small quantities of assembled kits. There are larger boxes in another part of the office, as well as kit supplies. The lower shelves house all of our punch needle designs. In between, can you spot a shelf that looks different?

Here's a closeup...can you figure it out? It's our supplies for our VERY SCARY Mystery Sampler! This was our BIG project from 2012, and it's still selling well. You can see the 3 piles of beautiful color covers, the little plastic tubs hold embellishments, and there are some assembled Parts 1, 2 and 3 on the right side.

Hopefully, this little photo tour will inspire us to finish our office cleaning and reorganization. It's a never ending saga around here...every time we publish a new design (that's every 2 months) we have to find a place to store it!!!

Suggestions for taming our inventory? Send 'em our way!