Organizing Tools

Is your garage or tool shed a disaster waiting to happen? Do you know you have a hammer somewhere, but just can't find it among the mess of other tools? If that's the case, it's time to organize your tools. You'll be grateful next time you're doing a project and looking for a certain one. A good way to keep smaller tools from cluttering up your workbench is to hang them on a pegboard. Here's a few steps to get you started.

1. First, put your tools in groups of similarity.
2. Next, designate an area on the pegboard for hammers, wrenches, saws, etc. If you want, you can use tape to square the areas off and be more precise.
3. After you designate the area, go ahead and hang each item on the pegboard in the appropriate place. A good idea at this point would be to use a marker to either trace around each tool, or draw a little picture or write the name of the type of tool at the top of the box, so that people know what goes where.

After getting all your hand tools organized on your pegboard, the next stop to organizing your tools is figuring out a place for all those extra screws and nails that seem to appear on your work bench. There are a few options for this. If you have and use a lot of different types of each, your best bet would be to go out and buy a little chest of drawers from your local hardware store. They usually stand about a foot tall and have anywhere from 16-20 little drawers that you can store each type of nail or screw in. After sorting them out and sticking them in drawers, don't forget to label your drawers so you know where to find what you're looking for and where to put them back. These are also useful for washers, nuts, bolts and any other small hardware items. If you have a lot of one type of screw or nail, easiest thing would just to get a glass jar or something similar and fill that up.

For larger power tools, although a lot of them come with their own cases, it's hard to find a place to put them. An idea for that would be to buy or build a set of shelves. Assign each tool and case a specific spot on the shelve and then take a piece of tape and label the shelve clearly so you'll know where to put it back.

A great way to store power cords it to wrap them up, then take a bungee cord and hook it underneath the loop created by the wrapped up power cord and hang the two ends from a hook. That way, you store both power cords and bungee cords and save space.

It may take a whole Saturday to accomplish, depending on how much of a disaster zone your work bench is, but organizing your tools will be worth it in the end.