Storage systems for components

Snap-top plastic bags

Drawer cabinet

You can store all your components in a single container, such as a plastic food box, but as you accumulate more items it will become increasingly difficult to find the smaller components! A cheap solution is to organise the parts into small snap-top plastic bags which can be labelled, in fact you may find that some components are supplied like this.

Probably the best storage system is a cabinet of plastic drawers. These can be expensive, but you do not need many drawers because there is no need to have a drawer for every single component value. Many parts can be grouped together, such as decades of resistor values. For example you could organise a 15-drawer cabinet like this:

1. Resistors 10+ (third band black) only a few, but they tend to be large
2. Resistors 100+ (third band brown)
3. Resistors 1k+ (third band red)
4. Resistors 10k+ (third band orange)
5. Resistors 100k+ (third band yellow)
6. Resistors 1M+ (third band green) and 
7. 10M (third band blue)
8. Presets, also variable resistors if they will fit in the drawer
9. Capacitors low values, less than 1µF
10. Capacitors electrolytic 1µF+
11. Diodes 
12. Transistors
13. LEDs
14. Lamps (also LED clips and lampholders)
15. ICs (chips) and their holders (DIL sockets)
16. Switches 
17. Relays
18. Connectors (crocodile clips, plugs and sockets)
19. Other components (battery clips, piezo transducers, LDRs, thermistors)