Day 24 - Home Remodeling Tool Storage

If you're a serious DIY-er it doesn't really take long for tools to start taking over your home. For a while during our extensive renovations of our 3 bed/ 2 bath ranch, tools and supplies (and displaced furniture/ appliances from other rooms) took over our entire living room. Talk about clutter! Check out these pics! Can you believe I taught piano lessons in this space for almost a year??

At one point, it was driving me SO crazy, I went out and purchased a bunch of tubs from Lowe's and organized all the clutter, being sure to label the tubs. I had an electrical tub, a plumbing tub, a tiling tools tub, etc. It really helped to organize the chaos so we could find what we needed when we needed it.

Now that this house is done (and we're in the process of selling it), we don't have so many tools and supplies on hand. So now we are able to keep all of them in our guest bedroom closet (as I've mentioned before on here). It is WONDERFUL being able to shut the door on all this stuff and only open it if we have a small project to work on. Admittedly, I'd rather leave this closet open for guests to use and keep this stuff in a garage or basement (but we don't have either one of those)...so I'm working with what we have!



All I really did was gather a bunch of random containers and cardboard boxes we had lying around the house, categorize the tools/supplies into said containers, and slap some printer address labels on them. Then I put everyone in on our wire shelving unit that we previously had in the closet. It is definitely NOT the prettiest set up. But it is functional.

We used a shoe container for "Sanding Supplies", another for "Painting Supplies" (such as paintbrushes, can openers, stir sticks, small rollers, etc.). We have a cardboard box dedicated to all types of hardware (screws, nails, etc.) Another box contains random door knobs and things that we didn't end up needing. We're also hanging onto all our cans of paint for touch-ups. We labelled the lids with a Sharpie with the room that each paint goes in.

On the floor of the closet is a tub that contains a tool bag. I like having the bag inside the box because then I can close the lid and it's less tempting for our 1 year old to get into if the closet door is open for a bit. It is full of all types of home remodeling tools (hammer, screw driver, channel locks, tape measure, air compressor blow gun, dikes, pliers, stud finder, electrical tape, wonder bar, nail puller, level, you get the idea...)

Next to that on the floor is a Bosch tool bag that contains our Bosch drill, electric screwdriver, reciprocating saw, jig saw, etc. After several years of dealing with Craftsman batteries that wouldn't hold a charge, I bought Dave a Bosch set for his birthday/ Christmas last year. I can not emphasize enough the importance of quality tools. After finding ourselves way back in the crawl space with the old Craftsman drill and 2 spare batteries only to find that NONE of them would work when we so desperately needed them to, we were ready to invest in a better set. Our Bosch tools are probably the best money we spent on the entire remodel. ...And we spent a LOT of money. ;)

I've seen several other neat ideas out there on the blogosphere.

For example, John & Sherry on Young House Love, liked to keep their remodeling tools handy in a drawer in their old kitchen. 

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They wrote all about that in this post and this post.

And Jen from IHeart Organizing just recently DIY-ed a really cute tool caddy that she keeps handy on a shelf in her laundry room.

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Check out her write up on Fresh Home here.

If space is limited, you could also just use a couple spare drawers in a dresser placed in an entryway or guest bedroom for tool storage. It would totally work in a pinch for tool storage.

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If you have a spot in your garage or utility room, tradition peg board would be fabulous for tool storage.

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And this idea of hanging tool belts inside a closet door would work wonders for coralling these types of items.

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So where do you store your DIY home remodeling tools? Does anyone out there have a tip on how to reduce clutter around the house and organize this type of stuff?