Too much bubble wrap.

So I'm the guy who always warns about small business burnout.

But it's hard to resist the chance at growth. 

It was a hard day yesterday, not just because of dealing with customers, which is hard enough for an introvert like me. (By the way, you'd never know I was introvert by how I act in my own store--I'm generally very outgoing.) I also had a batch of product show up which I had to unpack and stock. This has been happening almost every day.

Weird to say, but just dealing with the packing material alone is a problem. They don't do recycling at downtown shops except to pick up cardboard. So the packing material goes into the trash. These days, the trash fill up halfway through the week, so I have to find temporary receptacles until the next week. My neighbors will let me use whatever excess capacity they have in their pins, so that helps a little. 

I spend a fair amount of time just breaking down boxes.

I discovered a trick to bubblewrap this week. If you puncture the middle bubble in a sheet, the entire row of bubbles deflate. So I'm standing there for an hour between other chores popping bubbles. The crumbled paper filler that some shippers use can be unwound and folded, but it takes a lot of time, too much time for me to do it usually.

Anyway, along with the extra hours of ordering and stocking this increase in business has involved, there is the stupid neverending problem of dealing with shipments and the cardboard and filler they produce. 

Nice problem to have, this having too much business, but then I remember my own warnings about burnout. I'm trying to figure out how to balance the extra time and effort it's taking to deal with the increase.

Of course, the first half of next year will be its own solution in that business falls off. I'm just grinning and bearing the Christmas rush and hoping it all pans out.