Last week, we had our ‘container sort’ day (or, if you saw our Facebook post, the ‘container of doom’ sort out day!)  At the end of last year, it became clear we needed more storage space for all of our equipment and we recently managed to secure another storage container – you can imagine the joy this brought! 😉

With our first bell tent job of this year coming around fast we needed to get everything back in place and organised to ensure loading up is as easy as possible (at least to start with!).  The weather had been against us up until now so, when we saw a dry day, we went for it.

It got off to a good start with slightly more eventful school drop offs than usual but we all made it.  Then we opened the container… at a casual glance it looked full but not too bad or so we tried to convince ourselves.  We had a plan – empty the container down the middle, clear the back so that the bits we wanted to move into the new container could be moved first allowing us to then reorganise what was left to (hopefully) create more space.  You’re picturing Stacey in the warehouse, aren’t you?! With Plan A ready, we set to work.

Things came out fairly quickly and, before we knew it, we had a large chunk of our equipment spread out in front of us.  We kept ourselves motivated by moving the larger bits into the new container as planned (they took up quite a bit of space quite quickly).  We knew we had some bedding to sort as we had packs back from the laundry that needed splitting up into singles and doubles – as this is a job we all love so much it got set to one side ‘for later’!  This left going through all the boxes and ensuring equipment was where it should be; boxes were labelled correctly; all equipment was in working order; and, of course, a list was written of any replacements or restorations that were needed.  It felt like we were getting somewhere.

Within the team, we fall into 2 halves when it comes to sorting: those of us who believe in ‘keeping it for later in case we need it’ and the slightly more ruthless, ‘we haven’t used it in 2 years so we don’t need it’ half.  This can hinder progress when it leads to discussion but we got there!  We could see the container filling back up but in an organised way – we were happy with.  We could see the ground in front of us clearing (bar the much-loved laundry pile!) and we had a to-do list for jobs that needed doing before our first set up.

Then there was that much loved laundry pile…  Somehow Jo and I found ourselves sorting out the singles from the doubles despite everyone saying how they’d ‘come and get started on it next!’ So we felt it was only fair for Matt & Craig to sort the wedding laundry sets out.

And then everything was back in its place and we’re ready and set for the start of the season 😊

Helen x