And you, what’s your organization system ?

I started to tinker with electronics when a friend gave me an Arduino starter pack a year ago. At the time I only had a few components (some resistors, leds, jumper cables and push buttons) and it was easy to remember where everything was.

The problem

After each project, I had a little more spare parts lying everywhere and I quickly began to stack them in various boxes. It wasn’t that bad yet, since I mostly ordered the exacts parts I needed so I always had an approximate knowledge of the state of my stock.

But then I began to buy stuff pro-actively on Aliexpress in order to constitute a surplus of the most common components (resistors, capacitors, transistors, diodes…). And that’s when things became tricky. At some point, I couldn’t follow any more. I would end up spending a ridiculous amount of time trying to decipher the poorly written ref numbers on my components bags, following a hunch that “I did bought something like that a month ago, right ?”.

The solution

Well, I wouldn’t say that it is THE solution, but it is my attempt at a solution anyway.
I used an 8×8 plastic drawers cabinet to organize my parts. Each column is devoted to a category : resistors, electrolytic capacitors, ceramic capacitors, leds and diodes, sensors & other arduino-related modules, motors and cables.

In order to have a good picture of my stocks and to easily retrieve any specific component, I entered every part in a spreadsheet, specifying the drawer number in which it is stored, the quantity, ref number etc.
I made the spreadsheet publicly accessible if you ever want to take a look. Link here.

Parts

• Akro-Mils 8×8 plastic drawers cabinet from Amazon