I just love checking out other people’s workshops for those little flashes of inspiration. Make: Online reader Kaas of Ashland, WI wrote in with some excellent tactics for storing hardware. First, she uses chocolate milk containers to store screws and then tapes an example onto the outside of each one so she knows what’s inside — no labels necessary. For bulkier items she uses cat litter tubs.
16 thoughts on “More Workshop Organization Ideas”
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This is excellent, but the real question is how long did it take to drink 25 containters of Nesquik?!
About 5 years from 1999 to 2004.
Give the Nesquik to the cat, maybe? Actually, I do a lot of my making while wearing Nesquik tee-shirts, because I once bought a box of “rags” that turned out to be Nesquik tee-shirts in my size.
That idea of taping the screws to the outside is so simple, but smart.
And them Tidy Cat buckets are sweet. I gotta get me a cat. Wait, no I don’t.
I don’t think they actually sell it in that packaging anymore, at least not where I live. It comes in a bottle now.
That is a truly beautiful thing. Too bad one has to take part in (in)conspicuous consumption in order to re-use such storage items! What are we supposed to do, the bulk buyers, who avoid plastic waste-generating products? The closest I come to a clever re-use like this is making paint trays out of the Trader Joe’s burrito container(which is already biodegradable). This post inspires me to try and collect such waste from my less-conscious neighbors and stop buying those screw-bins from the big orange monster.
Hey, don’t be such a hard critic on yourself.
I think the trick to storing with re-used containers is just to save every container that can possibly be saved, for many years until you have enough of the same kind to make a good storage system. No matter where you got them this takes some discipline.
In case you were wondering about my soul I use Sweat Scoop cat litter and compost it in my back yard. It took some practice to figure out how to compost cat litter without gassing the entire neighborhood, but I think I have the trick now.
The cat litter containers are almost identical to the buckets of special sauce my local independent burger joint uses. They usually wipe them out and leave them next to the dumpster for a few hours before they put them in the recycling bin. Just remember to soak them in detergent of all of your supplies will smell like pickles.