12 tips for organizing your work space
Some studies suggest that organization leads to clearer, more productive thinking and creating, while others claim the opposite. You likely already have your own work and organizational style, and not much is going to change that. I’m basically a mildly messy person with periodic bursts of organizational energy. For years, I beat myself up over my chaotic ways, but then I decided that this was my basic organizational style and that I have still been able to be productive and successful.
One thing I’ve found that helps motivate me to be organized is really clever, thoughtful, and time-saving ideas. Reading a great organizational tip or about some cool organizational technology can inspire a burst of reorganizational energy. Here are a few of my favorite ideas.
1. Organize for first-order retrievability
This tip can help reduce the time it takes to find and grab your tools and materials. Arrange your workspace so that the more commonly used the tool or material is, the closer it is to you. Conversely, put more occasional tools farther away. This way, the shop is designed so that you can easily find what you need as you need it. Via Adam Savage
2. Arrange cords with binder clips
3. Take advantage of equipment dead space
Jay Bates shared this useful shop-organizing tip in one of his YouTube videos. For most of us, space is always at a premium. When setting up a shop, you want to carefully think of the workflow around the machines and how you can optimize operational efficiency and tool and material retrievability. Jay suggests that you plan to use the dead space of each machine (the side that you never interact with) to your advantage by grouping these edges together.
4. Keep track of small parts
Use double-sided tape to hold small parts in place while you disassemble or reassemble something. Affix the tape to a piece of paper and write where each part goes.
5. Apply stretch wrap to organize straps
If you have toe straps and ratchet straps in your shop or in your truck, you can quickly bundle them using stretch wrap. Just use a few loops of wrap and your rolled straps are good to go. You can even reuse the wrap for multiple strap-wrappings. Via Jay Bates
6. Mark your tools
From Caleb Kraft: “My grandfather was handy with tools (weren’t they all?). He had a small woodshop and a collection of miscellany that had been acquired through years of working on various machines. At some point he worked on trains; at another, he repaired vacuums.
“When you’re working in shops with other people, it is always smart to mark your tools so that you know someone else won’t end up with them. My grandpa’s mark was five little notches or slashes.
Use double-sided tape to hold small parts in place while you disassemble or reassemble something. Affix the tape to a piece of paper and write where each part goes.
5. Apply stretch wrap to organize straps
If you have toe straps and ratchet straps in your shop or in your truck, you can quickly bundle them using stretch wrap. Just use a few loops of wrap and your rolled straps are good to go. You can even reuse the wrap for multiple strap-wrappings. Via Jay Bates
6. Mark your tools
From Caleb Kraft: “My grandfather was handy with tools (weren’t they all?). He had a small woodshop and a collection of miscellany that had been acquired through years of working on various machines. At some point he worked on trains; at another, he repaired vacuums.
“When you’re working in shops with other people, it is always smart to mark your tools so that you know someone else won’t end up with them. My grandpa’s mark was five little notches or slashes.
7. Label cables with bread tags
Here’s a tried and true method of cable labeling that I have used for years: plastic bread-bag tags.
8. Make your own pocket notebooks
I’ve been using Moleskine Cahiers pocket notebooks every day since 2006. I have dozens of volumes of them filled with article ideas, design sketches, notes on my day, and various other scribblings. They’re fun to go back through to see where my mind has been over the years. I often find buried gems I can use today. As much as I love Cahiers, they aren’t cheap. And while I customize mine with cover art, stamps, and stickers, it’s just not the same as if I’d made them myself.
Bob Clagett of I Like to Make Stuff makes his own (see his Pocket Notebooks how-toon YouTube). When you make them yourself, you have something that’s infinitely customizable using your preference of cover paper stock and design, internal paper (or combination of paper types), pockets, size, and so on. I’ve made a few of my own over the years and they definitely hold a special “inspired object” status in my collection.
9. Give your notebook a keyword index
I was so thrilled when I ran across this notebook hack, allegedly from Japan, on Instagram. I fill up lots of notebooks and frequently use a single journal for work ideas, personal projects, and domestic planning (trips, meals, shopping, and so on). Finding things in makers’ notebooks across volumes, and within volumes, can be a real chore. The only real way of fixing this access problem is taking the considerable time to index everything.
The following simple approach allows you to fairly quickly build a back-of-book index of significant content as you go (you could build it in the front of the book, too).
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