My team is wanting to organize are shop better this offseason. The focus of this project is to
We bought a couple of tall wire shelf units and put wheels on them:
http://www.homedepot.com/p/HDX-48-in-W-x-72-in-H-x-18-in-D-Decorative-Wire-Chrome-Finish-Commercial-Shelving-Unit-6T60184872C/100655787
http://www.homedepot.com/p/HDX-4-in-Industrial-Casters-with-Bumper-4-Pack-30260PS-YOW/100658236
We tend to put small odds/ends in stackable bins:
http://www.homedepot.com/p/Stanley-6-in-x-12-5-8-in-Black-Storage-Bins-4-Pack-057304R/202300297
And larger items in clear tubs:
http://www.homedepot.com/p/Sterilite-6-Qt-Storage-Box-in-White-and-Clear-Plastic-16428960/203120094
It works for our small storage room which we need to empty every meeting to get to the tools.
We use the large grey totes, but we also own a bunch of Sterilite ClearView latching totes in a variety of smaller sizes that we use to organize various small items including things like Ethernet cables, Xbox controllers, pens and markers, zip ties, etc. They’ve even got purple latches to go with our team colors.
All of them are labelled with the (theoretical) contents, but you can see inside since they’re clear. Some of the larger clear totes have dedicated purposes: we have a scouting tote, a battery spill kit tote, a business/outreach tote, etc.
We also built a couple of wooden rolling parts storage towers for use with Stanley-style organizers with removable bins (we actually buy most of ours from Harbor Freight or the Canadian equivalent, Princess Auto). We’ve seen other teams use this approach (188) but our inspiration was actually Adam Savage from Mythbusters. Our towers look very similar to what this guy built:
We use these to organize all our smaller parts including sensors, switches, pulleys, shaft collars, fasteners, motor controllers, LEDs, etc.
These are good for travel as they’ll fit easily in the back of a pickup or SUV or underneath a coach bus. We installed a removable vertical rod in each tower that locks all the organizer totes in place by their handles.
Here’s a shot of us setting up our pit at Ontario District Champs, you can see one of the storage towers and a couple of the purple-handled clear totes.
We did similar to the post above when we had a store room off a classroom; this year we had our shelves in place. Next year, who knows?
One thing to consider is matching your bins to the shelves - 12" deep bins on 18" shelves makes for a lot of wasted space, which tends to accumulate clutter. If you have 12" deep bins, I would recommend either 12" or 24" deep shelves (with storage on both sides in the case of 24").