Fittingly so, considering the number of items it has to contain and the constant flow of products in and out, one of the hardest areas of any retail space, factory, or warehouse to keep clean and organized is the stockroom. There’s items of all sizes and shapes to hang on to, and sometimes it can get a little too overwhelming. If you need some help keeping your stock room cleaned up and properly arranged, we’ve got a few tips here to get started:

Make A Good Floor Plan: Even more so than a lot of other areas of your retail space, making a clean and thought-out floor plan for your stockroom will help in a number of ways. Providing your employees enough room to walk and navigate the stockroom will help them remember where items are located and allow them to quickly get to the items they need without causing a traffic jam or having to get around a lot of excess fixtures. Nothing is worse than making a customer wait for an employee to be able to find something in the stockroom, and a strong floor plan is the first step towards preventing this problem.

Set Policies For Stockroom Operations: While the stockroom might sound pretty self-explanatory – “this is where x item is kept”, so on and so forth – having a clearly-defined stockroom policy and operating guide will help to prevent further messes and disorganization, and your employees will appreciate having a well-written guide to work from. Provide a series of policies and tips on how to search for items, when to restock, and how to report things like missing items and low stock, and keep your employees well-educated and up to date on each of these policies.

Provide Plenty Of Storage: This may seem obvious, but keeping your stockroom equipped with plenty of shelving, fixtures, and the like is the best way to keep everything organized and ensure each item you carry has its own space. Keeping a wide range of industrial shelving on hand will allow you to keep items up off the floor and in an easy-to-access height, and help everything stay labeled and organized. Smaller or more frequently-used items can be kept in plastic storage bins to stay at arm’s reach and can be easily categorized by item type, size, material, or even just the color of the bin if you want. Whatever it is you have to store, you can ensure your items stay right where you need them with extra storage options.

Provide For Your Employees: Depending on the size of your retail space or facility, many stockrooms serve a dual purpose as an employee breakroom, meeting space, and the like. If this is the case for your store, make sure your breakroom has amenities like table space, a bulletin board for worker communications, and a mini-fridge for holding on to drinks and lunches.

Whatever your stockroom holds and whatever you’ll need to use it for, follow these tips and your stockroom will be as clean and tidy as possible!