[personal] cctalk Digest, Vol 52, Issue 27

My main component storage is a set of interlocking drawers arranged in a block about 4 feet wide by 3 high. Some drawers are square-fronted (about 1.5" sq) and some are double-width. The resistors are in double-width drawers, with two E12 values per drawer. First row is 10/12 ohm, 15/18 ohm, 22/27, 33/39, 47/56, 68/82. Next is 100/120, etc, then 1k0/1k2, etc, and so on up to 680k/820k, then the last row is assorted "1M to 8M2", "10M and over", "less than 10R", "high wattage", and things like that. For E24 and closer-tolerance values, I just put them in the drawer that's got the nearest-matching label. Capacitors I have squeezed into 1 row, one decade to a drawer, and a couple of bigger drawers for larger electrolytics. The really big ones are in a box elsewhere.

To give an example of how the ICs are stored, there's a drawer for "LS00 - LS80" or thereabouts, with the lower end of that range stored in the front and the upper half in the rear section of the drawer. So there are 4 or 5 drawers for each logic family. Two places I used to work had one drawer per type but that's overkill for my collection.