Whats the 1st thing to do when you work on your boat motor?

[scook]

I’m cleaning out my shop and I have a lot of stuff. What’s working for me is to take a stab at how much of one kind of thing I have (that I want to keep), put it in a nice clean cardboard box, write on it in big fat felt marker what it is and face the label out on a shelf. “BOAT PARTS” might work for you. With everyone getting Amazon deliveries, it’s not hard to get an assortment of good boxes and “put like things together” one of my wife’s great sayings.

Hope this helps. Lord knows you help enough people

[Destroyer]

Originally Posted by scook

I***8217;m cleaning out my shop and I have a lot of stuff. What***8217;s working for me is to take a stab at how much of one kind of thing I have (that I want to keep), put it in a nice clean cardboard box, write on it in big fat felt marker what it is and face the label out on a shelf. ***8220;BOAT PARTS***8221; might work for you. With everyone getting Amazon deliveries, it***8217;s not hard to get an assortment of good boxes and ***8220;put like things together***8221; one of my wife***8217;s great sayings.

Hope this helps. Lord knows you help enough people

I have several boxes of "Boat Parts" boxes already. Problem is whatever I'm looking for is never in any of them. (It's usually in a box labeled "dishes" or some such thing)........

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[scook]

I can’t argue with that

[phatdaddy]

Great idea Scook. Been trying to consolidate smaller boxes to the tubs like Depot sells. But I have two storage sheds. One at the house and another bout 8 miles from here,so wherever I m working,what i need is cross town.

I like your idea of writing on the boxes. I put tape and wrote on mine. Came back couple weeks later and tape had curled up and fell off. I ll get a paint pen.

[scook]

I use the cardboard boxes for stuff that I don’t use real often and try to get clear plastic boxes for more often used things, so I can see what’s in them. If you’re stuck with those black Depot boxes, white or yellow paint pens are great for labeling. I kind of prefer yellow. For me, I’ve got to see the labeling, or the stuff, at a glance.

I’m also reorganizing my roll-chests and stuff disappears as soon as the drawers close, so I’m using a tape type label maker pretty extensively on them.

Another thing I’ve learned the hard way is to not over or under sort stuff, e.g. nails, screws, bolts. If you have like things together, you can dump out a container of small machine screws, nuts & washers, paw through them for what you need and shovel the rest back into the container - same for boat parts. The key is “like enough” without overdoing it.

[scook]

The wide black felt markers work well on standrd brown cardboard boxes. For big boxes, the really fat ones are good.