There are many different types of disasters that can hit businesses. While it’s impossible to have a plan in place for every single specific disaster, your business needs to have a basic disaster recovery plan that addresses the most common types of disasters that are likely to hit you. If you haven’t started putting this plan together, September is the perfect time. It’s National Preparedness Month.

FEMA created National Preparedness Month to help raise awareness of business disasters and the importance of being prepared for them. The theme for 2022’s National Preparedness Month is “A Lasting Legacy.” Business owners are building their legacy. The business you create will be passed on to your children, and if they continue to be dedicated to it, they will pass it on to their children and so on. Generations later, your business could still be going strong with your descendants at the helm. However, if you’re unprepared for disasters, your entire company could be wiped out.

Let’s take a look at disaster recovery and how Junk King Dallas can help you be better prepared to deal with them.

Why Do You Need a Disaster Recovery Plan?

Some business owners may believe they don’t need to be prepared for a disaster because they’ve handled plenty of what they consider disasters on their own. However, what they’re classifying as a disaster may not really be a business-ending event. Disaster Recovery Plans don’t deal with things like inventory shortage, employee shortage, a few leaks in the roof, or other, fairly minor issues. Instead, they’re focused on things like a hurricane destroying the store, a data breach stealing hundreds or thousands of customer credit card numbers, or the business losing access to all of its information in the cloud. 

If one of these disasters hits your business, do you have any idea what you would do? If you don’t have a plan, you may spend a day or more putting one together. While this does let you create a plan designed to deal with your unique disaster, it’s also a hastily formed plan that may include strategies that weren’t fully vetted or angles that weren’t covered. Your plan may get your business up and running again, but it may not be the most effective or efficient. It may also leave out items that become issues later.

With a disaster recovery plan, you don’t have to come up with anything on the spot. You may have to adjust the basic plan slightly to fully address your current situation, but you have the outline of a plan to follow. You know where to direct your employees if the office is inaccessible, where your data backups are stored, what agencies to contact if data was stolen, and more information at your fingertips. You shouldn’t have to do any extensive research, your company’s leadership team should know what’s going on, and your employees should know what’s expected of them during this uncertain time. 

How Does Junk Removal Fit into this?

Junk Removal can fit into a disaster recovery plan in a few different ways. These plans look at the business as a whole, and that means looking at old stock, promotional materials, files, furniture, and everything else. Junk typically plans one of two parts when it comes to disasters.

It Causes Them

Junk could actually be the cause of a disaster such as a fire or a flood. If you have a lot of old stuff in front of a wall that has plumbing in it, you may not notice if a pipe in that wall breaks. Too much junk in the basement can cover water accumulating from a drip, while a lot of junk shoved under sinks can hide issues with the plumbing there. 

Fires can also start from junk. A lot of the junk that accumulates in offices is flammable. A single spark could set a whole box of old documents aflame, and that fire could quickly spread to other boxes. If you don’t have a sprinkler system in your office, the entire building could go up very quickly. 

Junk also provides a home for pests such as mice. These rodents could chew on electrical wiring, causing a fire. They will also chew up paper and other items before leaving behind droppings. For businesses that have to follow strict health codes such as restaurants, bakeries, grocery stores, and other areas with food, this can cause you to be fined or even be forced to close until the problem is resolved. Keeping your space clear of junk will help reduce the risk of attracting rodents.

You Have to Deal with Junk During the Clean Up

The second way junk impacts your disaster recovery plan is that you have to deal with it after the disaster. If this was something like an earthquake, tornado, or fire, you’ve got all this extra stuff you have to sort through while trying to find things you can recover. This makes extra work for you and your team during what is one of the most stressful times. 

Your insurance company is going to want to know what was in the building, so you’ll have to account for junk when taking inventory. If there’s any connection between what caused the disaster and the junk you were storing, it can cause issues with your claim. 

Where Does this Junk Come From?

It’s not always easy to see when junk starts to pile up or what will become a part of your junk pile. Most people throw away things that are obviously trash. However, with businesses, it’s not always that simple. You may have some old office furniture that could still be used, so you don’t want to get rid of it just in case you need it. It goes into the basement or storage room. It might sit in there for years, unused and unneeded. At some point, it becomes junk because when you do decide to use it, you’re likely to pull it out only to find that it’s not that great. It’s old, and while being in storage means it wasn’t in use, time still takes its toll. You may store something for years only to pull it out and immediately trash it because it doesn’t fit your needs.

Why keep it, then? All you’ve done is let it take up space that you could have used for something else. It can be tempting to keep stuff that still seems useful, especially if you’re a small business without an established income stream. However, keeping trash isn’t useful. If you want to hold on to items that you may need later, keep a list of what you’re storing and when you put it in storage. Evaluate these items regularly, and if you’ve kept something for a year without needing it, consider dumping it. 

Junk and Your Disaster Recovery Plan

By regularly evaluating the things you’re storing and getting rid of stuff you know you don’t need, you’re actively reducing your risk of a fire or flood. You’ll still want to create a disaster recovery plan for those situations, of course, but you may not have to worry quite so much about those disasters occurring. 

Cleaning out junk regularly will also help reduce the amount of stuff you’ll have to deal with after a disaster. You can keep your inventory cleaner, and you’ll know exactly what you were storing and when it went into storage. 

Make Junk King Dallas a Part of Your Disaster Recovery Plan

Junk King Dallas can help you with disasters in two ways. First, we can haul off any junk or other items you don’t want to keep. By tracking what you have in storage and getting rid of items you no longer have any use for, you help keep your business space cleaner and more organized. We’ll come pick up all of that stuff as long as it isn’t classified as hazardous waste. This includes furniture, appliances, shelving, displays, and much more. All you have to do is call or text us for an estimate. You can use our online estimate tool as well, but it may not be able to price everything because it was designed for basic items. 

Junk King Dallas now provides residential junk removal and commercial junk removal to the following areas in and around Dallas, Texas: Garland, Highland Park, Mesquite, Plano, Richardson, Rockwall, Rowlett, Sunnyvale, and Wylie.

We can also help after a disaster by coming in and hauling away anything that’s been damaged. You won’t need us after some disasters—there’s not much we can do to help with a cyberattack, for example—but we can assist you in cleaning up after a fire, flood, or other natural disaster. We’ll load up anything you no longer need or that has been destroyed and haul it away so you can focus on rebuilding. 

Junk King Dallas believes in full transparency, so every estimate we provide will include all fees and other costs to you. Every estimate is free, and there is never any obligation to use our services. If you’d like to know more, give us a call at 1-888-888-JUNK, send us a text to 1-737-888-5865, or reach out to us online.