Hot Rods So, where DOES stuff go in the garage?

I lost the fight.

 

Something tells me this guy never lost a thing in his life!

 

I don't know, there's some tool outlines with no tools on them...

And why so many cutting attachments?

 

His neighbor borrowed them with a $100 deposit.
I'm betting this is more of a showoff hobby collection.

 

Looks like the tool control panel of a H.S. metal shop.

 

Thats what my garage floor looks like. Except all the stuff is in a pile and takes up much less space . Also there is a shadow that is cast by a bigger pile of stuff .

 

One of the window garnish moldings of my A coupe disappeared from the shop only to turn up behind a wall of Smurfs in my daughter's room. Especially interesting since she' moved away from home ten year before. I never figured it out.

 

That's pretty, but useless. I couldn't reach anything, and, I'd never put anything back, because I couldn't reach it.

 

Worst thing I do is put things that are very important in a "safe place". The other day I was searching for a very expensive old vintage part to show a buddy who was coming over the next day. Took 4 hours of looking, and never found it. My wife walked in and asked what I was doing out there so long? I told her, and she does a glance around the shop and says, "what's in that nice wooden box sitting up on the top shelf?"
Of course it was the box I'd especially grabbed just to keep the part in. Duh. And I'm still looking for my pristine 1939 Chevy hood ornament! I wrapped it in a white towel, and decided not to use it on my coupe, but wanted to put it somewhere safe. Well it's so safe I can't find it. Better have my wife look for it!

 

Yeh, never quite understood that whole pegboard deal displaying every tool owned.
I do have some odds and ends on a small pegboard in my front garage, pliers, crescents, a couple screwdrivers, etc, I call them "honey-do" tools.
Always wondered why some guys just didn't use a big main tool box.

 

I do paintless dent repair. Sometimes when I do a hail job and have to drop a headliner I find other techs pdr tools stuck into the roof brace onetime a scale more then likely for drugs.

 

The human mind is an interesting thing... it's not that you didn't have the problem 30 years ago, you just don't remember it! That's one of the good things about getting old: you could have been as good as you want at something "back then". I was handsome, funny, well hung and a great lover. Honest! That's the way I remember it, and I'm sticking to it!

 

You win!

 

Everything has a place, and everything is in its place. All electrical and air tools are boxed away along with specialised ones. I've recently started to downsize some of my tools; rotisserie, tyre skates, porta-power, plasma/TIG etc etc. Other tools to soon follow once my latest project comes together; MIG welder, compressor, air tools.....
I've never had a pegboard and rely on all my tool boxes as I know what I have and where it's located.

 

Can you come fix my garage?

 

This thread is proof that a man can't have too many tools. The odds are a lot better that you can find that 10mm socket if you have 10 of them.

 

Been looking for the TV remote for a couple weeks.

 

Where are the Band-aids?

 

I think that you have a future in reality tv. Picture a show where you make all of our garages look something like that. Sponsored by tool companies. You'd be jetting around the world!

 

I've looked through my shop 4 times, and still can't find a cast iron Chevy bell housing. How the hell can that disappear?

 

Same place as socks..........

 

7 flint spark tools, would tell me he lost and found some.

 

When you find yours, let me know where it was. I have an NOS one that was sanded and painted a purple-ish color. You’d think it would be easy to spot, right?

 

I had a similar board at my old house shop. Not nearly as large or elaborate . Worked very well when friends would stop by to B/S and do some small repairs on their junk. Before they left I could glance at the wall and know what was missing. During the move to my new location 20 something years ago, I had the board strapped to the top of my station wagon, wind got underneath it and it was broken into three pieces. Never made another one. Now I wouldn't have the wall space to hang it up. On another note I purchased a rather large tote with wheels on one end to put the newly purchased parts and special parts for the next project. Works pretty well for holding all the stuff I want to put away for safe keeping. Joe

 

I like that one, Gene

Ben

 

Last time I did a complete garage cleanup I made an inventory list of all of the new or good used parts I had stored in the garage ( like alternators etc.) as well as what their part number and application is. I tried to store them all in one area of my shelves. So far I have been able to look on the list, see if I have it and then actually find it many times since I started. Sure beat trying to remember all of the details and then search. This spring when I do a good cleanup again I will do the same with my specialty tools as that seems to be what I search for the most now.

 

Where does stuff go in my garage, sometimes it has help going outside.

30+ years ago, when we first moved to “the farm” I had to bring a few loads of stone in to build up the drive to my work shop. I came home from work one day to find my two boys, ages 7 & 9, chucking some pretty white #2 limestone out in the yard. After a couple of hours of the three of us picking up rocks I explained to them about how bad it is to have rocks in the yard as I try to cut grass with the lawn mower. A couple of days pass and I come home to the younger boy holding my ½” socket rail (3/8 – 1 ¼” sockets) under his left arm as he’s pulling sockets off with his right hand heaving them with all his might.

As I’m smacking his butt, running him up to the house, all I can here is “But daddy their not rocks, not rocks”. I never did find all my sockets. But a few years later the youngest became a pretty good baseball catcher. He threw more than one boy out trying to steal 2nd base.

 

Its a lot different with tools than parts because you are constantly using some of them. As someone who worked in "property management" for the government, I can tell you its a lot easier to make an initial inventory sweep (and add to it when something else shows up), than it is account for everything you itemized...........on subsequent inventories. For tools, the best thing is to either make identifiable locations where you can see something is missing.......OR..........have many of each type of tool and store them in an identifiable location when found. By that I mean, I have multiples of every wrench size. They have all kinds of shapes and brand names. Not all of them are complete sets. So instead of trying to organize each tool, I organize them by tool size. I have a Craftsman top box for Standard wrenches and one for Metric wrenches. I designate a drawer for each size and the larger sizes I use a larger drawer and let it cover several sizes. (I don't have as many 1" wrenches as I have 9/16" wrenches. I also have a pegboard with 5/16 studs sticking out about 3" that I can hang wrenches on near the lift on the other side of the shop. The idea is that I don't care what brand it is, if its a certain size it goes in a certain drawer or on a certain peg. I have no idea how many wrenches I have or if I lost another one......I still have plenty and I know where I can find another one quickly. Lets face it, wrench sets up to 3/4 are cheap, so get plenty and don't worry about it. Same thing with sockets.





Everything is ":semi-organized" and the only inventory done is when a drawer gets empty. There is no way I could ever inventory all my stuff, so I find that storing similar things near each other in cabinets is the only viable way.

 

Back in the 90's I would have a buddy come out to the shop when I was working out there. It was nice to have somebody there to bounce idea's off of and his job was to watch where I would lay tools down at. He got quite good at it and after a while I called him my spotter. Guess I still have a habit of walking away with a tool, putting it down nowhere near where I'm working and then going huh, where's that wrench ? Some things never change.

 

Agreed on the tools. I have 2 toolboxes set up, metric and Imperial. The tools I typically have to search for are the ones I use once a year or so. I do have some placed in a specific cabinet though..they are easy to find. The others are carefully tucked away on shelves and cabinets…somewhere in this garage!