How do you organize products?

heatgain

heatgain

Neutral & Detached
A rainy day off from work finds me in the garage, looking to once again re-organize my products and supplies. I had it organized fairly well some time ago, but a splurge of new product acquisition has returned my shelves and storage drawers to a state of confusion and disorder.

Have you found a good system for keeping product/supplies well organized? How far do you go to keep organized?

Please be specific.

For instance, do you keep polishes with polishes, waxes with sealants, paste wax separate from liquid separate from spray wax? Do you keep exterior products separate from interior? If you store interior products separately, do you separate dressings from cleaners?

Perhaps you prefer to organize by manufacturer? Duragloss here, Ultimate there, etc?

Do you store MF towels by plushness, use, or color?

Polish pads in one drawer, LSP pads in another, or 8" pads here, 6" pads there? Do you go so far as to store terry applicators separate from foam and MF?

After much trial and error, have you finally arrived at a system of organization that satisfies your needs?

Please share not only how you organize, but the reasons why you do it like that.

Thanks!
 
i sort MF by quality, and thats sorted by exterior/interior



polishes get put together



meguiars stuff is kept together (although polishes are kept to themselves in the megs realm) but its organized in its own way by products

same goes for mothers products and such



interior products get put together, and then i have a section for miscellaneous products as well.



it works for me. i cant wait to get more products so i can reorganize.
 
Four big categories: stuff I use all the time, mostly in handy sizes, is in the shop; refills and stuff I don't use often are the two storage rooms; stuff for cleaning up the shop is under the utility sink or stored in the bathroom vanity cabinet; laundry stuff is on a shelf behind the washer/dryer.



In the shop, I keep my shampoo jugs (concentrate and foamgun mix) on the floor of the wash bay. My wheel/tire/APC products are hooked to the wheel/tire bucket. Clay lube is hooked to a wash bucket (usually with a blob of Sonus green stuck to the top of the bottle). My QDs/interior cleaner/window cleaner are hooked to my cart, the shelf and drawer of which hold vacuum attachments, swabs, and other such stuff.



On the shelves, I have three categories: paint; interior/rubber/vinyl; metal polish/misc. I don't separate things by manufacturer or anything like that, but my clays, polishes, AIOs, and LSPs are grouped together as are my vinyl, rubber, and leather products.



I have the polishers/etc. on another set of shelves.



Hand tools are in the roll-away.



I have my pads/sponges/etc. in plastic drawer units (with spares in a storage room in RubberMaid Rough Totes). I group them by PC;Cyclo;rotary;hand;wool;misc. I put my finishing and LSP pads in ZipLocks but my others are just thrown together (they're always cleaned first anyhow).



My towels are in seven (!) RubberMaid trash cans of varying colors and sizes- crappy cotton, OK cotton, very good cotton; glass only; crappy MF, very good MF, wash/dry MF. Spares are in a storage room in RubberMaid Rough Totes.
 
Well we have a 3000 sq ft shop so we have some space but in general we have 2 utility carts that we use one for interior and one for exterior. They hold all of the brushes and spray bottles and cans on them. We have a large cabinet for our towels, we have MF and old cut up towels for dirty work, we have probably 400 towels.



In addition we have 2 locking cabinets for extra supplies. We have 55 gallon drums of product around the shop and we have our bottle filler containers (5 gallon I think) on shelves.



Its really apples to oranges but if there is anything I would reccomend it would be a utility cart.



Ours looks like this:
RUB_163.jpg
 
I've been looking at carts at harbor frieght website and wanted to get one but for my garage, shelves/cabinets are more practical.



One shelf I have all my waxes, polishes, sealants, interior chemicals, etc on one shelf(sorted by use). Another shelf above that holds all my spray dilluted stuff, wash soaps. Bottom 2 shelves are rubbermaid boxes with MF/PADS/mitts/appkicators/brushes/PC etc...



overflow goes in a cabinet...need a bigger shelf, but I'm just a weekend warrior that does detailing on the side.
 
I place everything I need in a big shelving unit in my garage. Each shelf is dedicated to a specific part of the detail.



Shelf 1- Wash and Wheel products and tools

Shelf 2- All polishing stuff(polishers,polishes,tape etc)

Shelf 3- Carpet care(vacuum, LGM, brushes)

Shelf 4-Interior care

Shelf 5- All LSP/Finishing touch related items(wax, apps,tire shine,trim care,glaze etc)

Shelf 6- All MF and Pads
 
2k2blackWRX- OOH...your shop's size makes me miss my commercial building! I'm making do with a floorplan about 2/3 of that now (purpose-built detailing shop attached to our home), and it does make a difference. And hiking my spare stuff up the spiral staircase to the office/storage rooms isn't exactly fun! Second story space is better than *no* extra space, but it has it's limitations too.



Those 5-gallon bottle-fill containers are handy, huh? Now if I just had room for some of those big drums you're using (heh heh, not taking *those* up the stairs :D ).



And yeah, carts are *incredibly* handy. I just love having a place for the polishes/LSP I'm using and somewhere to park the polishers. Hmm.. a second one for interiors huh :think: wonder where I'd park that...



My Cyclos will hang off the cart's raised edge by their top handles, very convenient.
 
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