A NFP thrift-store shopkeeper writes: 
Needing some advice on processing donations. Our hospital thrift shop has a lovely, good-sized, well-lit store. BUT … the area to process donations is very small and piles up quickly with, on late Saturdays, yard sale castoffs and sometimes very heavy items. We’re all volunteers, nearly all women, and nearly all in our 60s to 90s!!! How do you manage your piles, in other words?????
Let’s go with the piles metaphor: Applying some Preparation H should do the trick!
First off: Have your H ready-to-go. Depending on how you manage your price tags, HANDY could help move salable goods from piles to perfection. Pre-prepared tags, stored next to where your piles accumulate, could cut tagging and decision-making down to seconds. Whether you store pre-printed price tickets in manila envelopes push-pinned to a corkboard, or have shoeboxes full of $5, $7, $10 tags, just having them to choose from means that bundle of jeans can be dealt with immediately… before they get buried beneath another pile of incoming.
Another H to hep move mounds to desirable merchandise: Think HYGIENIC.. as in cleaning things up so they are sales floor-ready. While I am not always a fan of pre-dampened cleaning wipes, these may be called for in a pile situation: Wiping down those florist vases with glass-cleaner wipes, or wooden goods with a polish wipe, could quickly diminish the incoming catastrophe. On Monday, these lick-and-a-promise goods can be more carefully groomed on the ales floor as volunteers chat, straighten, and cashier.
Then there’s the HORROR aspect of Preparation H: Things that should never have been donated to your cause to start with. You know what I’m talking about: the soiled undergarments, broken figurines, singleton dinner plates. Be relentless in trashing these… don’t be tempted to put these items aside “to deal with later.” As anyone in the resale industry knows, later never comes. Spend your, and your volunteers’, time on what will raise funds, not sap energy. Sure, maybe that dinner plate will sell for a dime, but is it worth the work and floor space?
These 
Auntie Kate The Resale Expert 