Taking Inventory is “Complete”

Although distracted by President Obama’s speech, I spent over 2 hours completing inventory last night.  Here are a few things worth mentioning:

1. I will create a database soon, but right now I am collecting the data in an Excel spreadsheet.
2. I quickly noticed that the columns I created for the food (a lot of nutritional information – calories, carbs, protein, etc.) didn’t make sense for all of the durable goods.  Therefore, I decided to create a new worksheet for them.  Then, it hit me – I should make a column for each category of preparation.  So, I now have the following worksheets:
   1. Food
   2. Cooking and Kitchen
   3. Commerce
   4. Medical-First Aid
   5. Energy
   6. Communication
   7. Protection
   8. Sanitation
   9. Tools
   10. Warmth
   11. Lighting
   12. Leisure and Comfort
   13. Water
3. With the exception of food, most of the columns in my worksheets were the same.  These are my non-food worksheet columns:
   1. Qty
   2. Item
   3. Description
   4. Notes
   5. Expiration Date
   6. Energy Source (if it needs something to “make it work” e.g. batteries, gas, etc.)
   7. Cost Each
   8. Tax Rate
   9. Cost each with Tax (multiply ‘cost each’ by ’1.0X’ with x being the tax rate)
   10. Cost extended (multiply ‘cost each with tax’ by ‘qty’”
   11. Where purchased (in case I want / need to buy again)
   12. Where stored (where it is currently being stored in our house)
4. I actually have two spreadsheets on each worksheet – one on the top and then an almost exact duplicate spreadsheet under it.  The one on the top is called “Items currently in inventory”.  The one underneath it is called “Left to Buy”.  This latter column is so that I can easily see what is left for me to purchase.  I thought about combining the two spreadsheets and just putting a “0″ in the qty column which would imply I need to get something or maybe add a column called “qty to purchase” and maybe even a column called “desired qty” and then just have the “qty to purchase” be automatically calculated as the difference between “desired qty” an “qty on hand”.    I decided to do it the way I did since this spreadsheet is hopefully temporary until I get the database up and running, and this would give me a quick way to see what needs to be purchased.
5. Over the last few months I had started this project 3 or 4 different times; so, I had 3 or 4 random spreadsheets already in existence.  I went through each of those to make sure I had accounted for everything.  I then deleted all of those previous spreadsheets from my hard drive to make sure I didn’t use them again.
6. I realized that many things I put on the “72 Hour Emergency Kit” worksheet really belong to these other categories.  So, I am going to go back and move each of these items into the appropriate worksheet.   I will create two additional columns “72 Hour Emergency Kit” and “Car Kit”.  If that item is part of either of these two “evacuation categories” will put an “x” in that column.  This will be a lot cleaner once the database is up and running, but creating a column like this will allow me to easily sort and find those items.  In fact, I may leave the “72 Hour Emergency Kit” worksheet and just have the items on that worksheet be listed in two different worksheets.  I want to be able to print a quick “evacuation  list” if and when that time comes.
7. I am struggling with how to keep up with “energy items”.   For example, my water purification device uses batteries.  Should I include the batteries in the same worksheet or put them in the “energy” worksheet.  It initially makes sense to put them in the same worksheet as the device they power, but it also makes sense to keep them in the energy column so that I can quickly see how many of each battery I need – that is, instead of listing AAA batteries in 6 different worksheets, I would combine them into the “energy” spreadsheet which would allow me to know if I had enough in stock.  Once the database is complete, this will take care of itself, but for now, it is a pain in my over-organized brain.

I know this sounds like a lot.  I think being organized is important so that we don’t miss anything or buy unnecessary duplicates.  It is also nice to be able look at what is needed for each category.

As I clean up the worksheets I will create pages for them so that others can review my lists.

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