Time for a spring clean? How's your workbench looking?

For long while I've put parts for a new job into a "Job box" which I then keep ( maybe for 10 years or more). I might raid the job boxes for left over parts but it can get very hard to remember where things are, especially when parts get moved to more recent boxes. Eventually I purge very old job boxes.

In parallel I have always kept standard parts in little drawers or boxes.

I'm moving towards a system where all parts go straight into common storage and the job boxes only contain very specific parts like pcbs  -  this is because I waste too much time looking for parts that I know I have somewhere.

I've just added another 256 little drawers to the system (taking the total up to about 1750). The problem is finding wall space to put them. There is certainly no room for pictures in this space !

The latest 256 drawers. The labels were printed on a second hand Zebra TLP2824 printer which I paid about £30 for. Thanks to  shabaz for recommending them !

The previous batch of 128 drawers were a little larger and filled up in about 3 months.

You can see the carousel thing of drawers in the background. Its quite good but about 3-4 x the price per drawer and takes up a lot of floor space - so I won't be getting any more of them.

MK

For long while I've put parts for a new job into a "Job box" which I then keep ( maybe for 10 years or more). I might raid the job boxes for left over parts but it can get very hard to remember where things are, especially when parts get moved to more recent boxes. Eventually I purge very old job boxes.

In parallel I have always kept standard parts in little drawers or boxes.

I'm moving towards a system where all parts go straight into common storage and the job boxes only contain very specific parts like pcbs  -  this is because I waste too much time looking for parts that I know I have somewhere.

I've just added another 256 little drawers to the system (taking the total up to about 1750). The problem is finding wall space to put them. There is certainly no room for pictures in this space !

The latest 256 drawers. The labels were printed on a second hand Zebra TLP2824 printer which I paid about £30 for. Thanks to  shabaz for recommending them !

The previous batch of 128 drawers were a little larger and filled up in about 3 months.

You can see the carousel thing of drawers in the background. Its quite good but about 3-4 x the price per drawer and takes up a lot of floor space - so I won't be getting any more of them.

MK

I would be open to having some drawers like those as well... but I couldn't imagine having 1750... I would forget what drawer something was stashed away in and be forced to search through them one by one.

I keep a spreadsheet to keep track of the parts !

Most resistors are not in the drawer system - I keep approx 600 different types/values (5 decades, 1%, E24 in 5 different types). 0.1% and power parts are in drawers because I don't keep the full range of values.

MK