Home and Automotive Tools
Organizing Your Tools in a Garage or a Shed.
Tool organization is essential to keep toolsready for immediate use. Whether it’s a routine automotive task or complex automotives application, the answer is to have exactly the rightautomotive tool or set of automotive tools where it can be seen, accessed, and stored with ease and safety. |  |  |
Tool inventory and accountability is a fundamental concept in military aviation applications where a single loose socket can create a life-threatening Foreign Object Damage (FOD) situation. The same principles exist in the automotive racing business; where high-speed, high-performance million dollar racing machines can literally explode from a misplaced wrench.
While not as critical for home automotive applications or shade tree mechanic’s needs, integration of an organized system for managing tools should be a prime consideration in any home improvement plan. The same considerations for organization, accessibility, and safety need to be addressed for volatile and pest control chemicals.
Tools should be marked with a system that identifies where a tool is supposed to be stored. This makes automotive tool inventory management much easier, if for no other reason than it obviates the need to actively remember where a tool belongs when it is clean-up time. Also, when re-organizing or replacing worn out, broken, or unserviceable tools, what was once stored in one place may now be somewhere completely different.
When acquiring new tools – as opposed to replacing a tool – or when renting tools/equipment, the same care and inventory management used for the permanent tools needs to be used on the rented or borrowed tools or equipment. Using a plastic embossing tape or lettering tape machine will prevent sudden aggravation.
The concept of every tool has its place and every place has its tool as used by military professional mechanics is a common sense practical solution for the hobbyist or professional automotive mechanic. In aviation applications, all drawers have foam inserts, cut out to the exact shape of the tool and labeled to indicate which tool belongs in what space. When a tool is removed or not present when taken out to the flight line, a cutout representation of the tool with the notation: This Space Is Intentionally Empty keeps the mechanic from searching for a missing tool that was never present to begin with.
Organizing tools is actually more fun than it sounds. Buying and installing the correct organization system that is adaptable, flexible, durable and practical is not a snap decision. If there is any doubt, consult an expert and get a recommendation for the optimal tool organization system to fit the specific requirements.
