data entry

The one task of reselling I put off the longest is the data entry. I have a notebook where I write down everything I buy, where I got it, what I paid for it, and what price I put on it. I use it as I process items so it is always complete. But then it needs to go into a spreadsheet, for taxes. Technically I only need that once a year, so I tend to put off entering it until the end of the year. Mistake! Because once I enter it, I ALSO then need to take each monthly sales list and find those items in the spreadsheet to mark them as sold. And I always, always, always forget that finding the sold items is just as time-consuming and tedious, if not more so, than entering them in the spreadsheet to begin with.

There is some nerdy value in doing this; I can sort the data to see what categories are my biggest sellers, what is the most popular, what never sells, etc. I can judge which months are busiest/slowest, my average price point, etc. There is satisfaction in getting this completed, and I get to re-live some really good sales especially the ones where I got a great ROI.

This year, though, there is also a deep sadness. I am only in the March/April inventory additions, and so many of the pages are items from my parents' house, or items I sourced while I was in Florida. As I type I can picture them in their house, I remember boxing them up and packing them into the pod. Sometimes I can even picture my parents using them or showing them to me, but this is less common; it's not that I don't remember, it's that most of what I am selling from their house is stuff they had tucked away unused and mostly forgotten. But then there are the ones that are sucker punches: Dad's gingerbread clock, Mom's CIC gift clock, the gurgle pots I bought for Dad over the last few years, the frames that Mom used for the family pictures in her bedroom.

I need to take breaks in doing this, but when I do it still just hangs over me, waiting to be finished. The only way through is through, page by page. I peeked ahead and I only have 5-10 more that included random house items.

Then it's 80+ MORE pages of thrifted/estate sale items that I have bought since I came home!

Oh, that sounds really bad. Did I buy that much stuff? Yes, but itemizing all of it makes it seem like more than it is. For instance, I bought a shoebox full of Barbie clothes and shoes for $20, but it filled 3 pages of the notebook when I sorted it all separately.

Ok, this has been a long enough break. Back to data entry. Pray for me!