When you own as many things as I do, organization is a must. Despite having a relatively messy work area, I’m pretty disciplined when it comes to organizing my storage. Over the years I’ve purchased dozens and dozens of garage storage tubs, plastic “shoeboxes” for storing smaller things, and Ziploc baggies for keeping bits and bobs together. I own lots and lots of things and found out a long time ago, searching for those things drives me absolutely batty. I am always on the lookout for new ways to organize things, whether that’s labeling the outside of all those storage tubs or keeping track of what’s where on a spreadsheet. Despite my best efforts, one of the areas that is constantly getting out of control is my workshop toolbox drawers. Despite my best efforts to “keep things apart,” somehow everything gets intermingled and tangled every time I turn around. I suspect every night after I close the drawer, some sort of Toy Story partying is happening in there.
I’ve been trying to come up with some sort of drawer organization system for a while now. I’ve looked online at drawer organizaters and the ones I found seem both expensive and not to my liking. I considered building something out of wood or even 3D printing something, but those solutions felt like a lot of effort and not very configurable. Instead, for the past few years I’ve done nothing, accepting that every time I go looking for a specific screwdriver it’s going to take five minutes of digging to find it.
A couple of months ago while searching for small storage containers on Amazon I found these: food containers. They come in a few different sizes and colors, but these particular ones had everything I was looking for — they’re black (which will look good in the workshop), come with lids, and, appealing to my thrifty side, are inexpensive. This 50 pack of containers costs $25.
There were some smaller ones available, but I thought these slightly larger ones would work better for storing tools and I was right. In the top drawer of my workbench I discovered I could put 15 of the containers (three deep, five wide) although after a little shuffling I removed the fifth row to make room for slightly larger tools. The top drawer is where I put smaller things that I use frequently — pliers, screws, tape measures, Allen wrenches, and so on. It was simple to sort things out into “like” piles and put them into containers. There’s a small space in the front of the drawer between the containers and the front of the drawer, which is a great place to store the screwdrivers I use the most.
The containers aren’t fastened down inside the drawer which makes them easy to remove if needed. Last week I was working on a van project that required an Allen wrench but I wasn’t sure what size I needed. I simply picked up the container full of Allen wrenches and took it to where I was working. Easy peasy!
So far, this system is working great. I’m planning to use the remaining containers to store other random items… and possibly, leftovers. ;)
If you’re interested in pickup a pack of these up, here’s a link to them on Amazon.
Brilliant idea! Something else to try would be the trays that frozen meals come in. I save those for other things but never thought to try them in my toolbox. I’m going to go try that now!