My Shipping and Mailing Kit

I love my envelope bins and I love that they are in something cuter than the ripped up cardboard boxes that they were in, but guess what?

By using my cute bins for all my envelopes, I had inadvertently made things a little harder for me.

I realized this when I was getting a few orders together to ship out the other day.

Normally, I grab the envelopes I need from the boxes sitting on top of a table. It's not very attractive, but it's super easy to get them.

This time, I had to crawl under my desk, open up the right drawer and then rummage through it to find the ones I needed.

Okay, not a huge hardship, but a small step backward in terms of productivity.

I then started thinking of all the other steps I normally go through when I fulfill an order.

Assuming that the card is already made, I grab the card, then walk over to find a matching envelope. Then I go through my folder of plastic sleeves and pick the right one. I put the card and envelope inside, slipping in a little printed "thank you" before sealing up the sleeve.

I walk across the room for a piece of chipboard, walk back to my papercutter and cut it to fit. Walk over to find a mailing envelope the right size and slip everything inside.

Then I weigh the package on a postage scale near my desk and place the right amount of postage on it by consulting a sheet I printed off the U.S.P.S. site.

A lot of walking around for such a simple task.

I realized that it would be simple to put all the supplies I needed for this task into one place, one handy kit.

I listed out everything I needed. Here's what I came up with:

• Card envelopes in the two common sizes I use for my greeting cards
• Outer envelopes, two sizes
• Chipboard
• Plastic sleeves, two sizes
• Printed thank you slips
• Stamps
• Printouts of the costs to mail envelopes

I found a really nice basket that was unused in our basement (if you're starting to think that our basement is completely overflowing with unused organizational supplies... well, you're not totally far off).

So, this is all the stuff that went into the basket:

And, at the top of this posting, a photo of my completed shipping and mailing kit! The clipboard keeps my postage information sheets handy and tidy (or I might just laminate them).

Maybe I don't get out often enough, but I'm pretty jazzed about this little basket that should make things even easier for me to do what I need to do!