Production will be a little different this year.

In the past, I dedicated every non-event weekend to making candles and melts. Sometimes I even found myself pouring on weeknight evenings when I really should have been unwinding and preparing for a good night’s sleep.

My approach was to pour based on what was selling—which made sense at the time—so I’d be restocked for the next event.

Eventually, I started to burn out (pun intended).

Now, I’m taking a page from my “prepare for a huge event” playbook and applying it to an entire season. Instead of reacting to sales week by week, I’m planning in advance what I’ll sell each quarter and determining quantities for each product. Then I order materials specifically for those seasons, open my planner, and schedule the production days I’ll need. That’s it.

The goal is to sell out by the end of each season, make adjustments based on how things went, and then plan for the following year.

In a way, I tested this approach during the last quarter of 2025. It was born out of necessity—I needed to plan ahead of new tariffs and shipping increases. Now I’m applying what I learned to this upcoming year.

So far, I’m finding this much more manageable.