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Another holiday season has come and gone, and while your team is probably thrilled to have the rush and madness behind them, you’re probably left cleaning up a big mess.

No matter how hard your crew worked over the holidays, there were probably some things that fell through the cracks – sweeping/mopping, recycling and trash removal, rearranging of your warehouse shelves, and so on. It’s nobody’s fault, there’s just too much to do during the peak retail season – but now with the holidays over, here’s the perfect opportunity to get everything back to normal! Try these easy methods to get your warehouse back under control after the holiday rush is over:

 

Review your current staffing levels:

Even if you have temp workers that will be gone after the holidays, you might still have them through the new year, and these are a great resource for putting everything back to normal. Take your temp workers and assign the bulk of the cleaning/organization tasks to them so the full-timers can stick with their usual day-to-day routine, as they’ll be the ones most familiar with the usual operations.

 

Perform as many inventory counts as time allows:

This is going to be an ongoing project for the next month or so, but now is a perfect time to start re-checking your inventory against what your system says the levels should be at. Start with your most popular items and work your way around, checking your on-hand level versus what the system thinks you should have, and then see what needs to be re-ordered right away – now that the holiday rush is over you might not need to re-stock certain items as quickly as you have been over the last few months.

 

Re-distribute the product you have:

Let’s all be honest; during the holidays you might not have been as careful about shelving items as you really could have been, and now you have a great chance to put everything back to normal. Reorganize your pallet racks to make sure the remaining inventory is easy to get to and is stored safely (ie not hanging right over the edge), keep your wire shelving cleared up and free of obstructions, and all bulk storage should be reorganized to spread the product more evenly and keep the rack (and your workers) safe. This way you can avoid the ‘stacks and stacks’ problem that you probably dealt with during the holiday rush.

 

Don’t forget the office:

If you have a warehouse office for your more administrative tasks, it’s probably fallen into disarray after the busy season too, but it’s not totally hopeless! Re-up on all your usual office supplies like pens, printer paper, and lost tablet/phone chargers, take some time to file away all your invoices and paperwork that needs to be stored but won’t be used for a long time, and if the budget allows it, treat yourself and replace that busted old chair you’ve been sitting on.

 

Remember to take a break (and give your employees one, too):

Of course, after how busy you were all year, the least-appealing thought in the world is probably the idea of tearing down your warehouse and starting all over again. You’ve still got plenty of time until the next holiday season is upon us, and business is going to be slow through January – don’t stress the little things, and let your employees relax a little as they go about their tasks. You’ve earned it after the last few months.

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