You can never have enough tools. Or enough space to keep them in. Tools to a DIY enthusiast are like diamonds to a gemologist. They’re precious, tough yet sometimes delicate, often expensive and definitely need caring for. Good, appropriate storage is a major factor in their care.
Get Organised
Having an organised storage area for all the various tools and fixings that go along with DIY makes it quicker and easier to get started on a job — and to finish it.
- Keep drill bits in a drill block. This should be an easy DIY hack for enthusiasts, and have a bespoke advantage. Use your existing drill bits to make holes in a block of wood (or other material), then label the hole with the bit size. It’s handy to keep on the workbench and portable so you can take it from project to project, while still keeping your drill bits in one place and tidy.
- Fix narrow shelving above the bench in a workshop to hold smaller hand tools like screwdrivers, wrenches or pliers and hammers. Drill holes to the size of each tool, then drop them back in their place when you’ve finished with them.
- Screws, nails, staples or wall plugs have a habit of going walkabout. Screw the lids of jars to the underside of shelves. You can see what’s inside the jar and easily unscrew it, but it’s up off the bench and won’t get lost.
Other ideas for keeping loose things neat include fixing bulldog clips to the inside wall of a shed for hanging gardening gloves, and fitting short lengths of plastic waste pipe to hang up hoses or power cables.
Easy Maintenance with Good Storage
Tools, especially power tools, don’t come cheap. Careless storage can lead to damage, either through damp and rust or by having other items piled on top. Larger tools of the DIY trade also tend to take up a lot of space, especially if you want to give each item the room it needs for its own protection.
When you also consider that many specialist tools also lie dormant for a lot of the time, you might be tempted to sell them to make room for stuff you use more often. The problem, of course, is that you don’t want to invest large sums every time you need that tool for a new project. An answer is self storage units, where you can not only give expensive tools some protection with space, but also make sure they’re secure in a damp-free environment. You can find Self Storage in London that will be equipped for your requirements.
Large items may include long ladders, pasting tables, paint sprayers, jigsaws and many others. Some people use self storage on a seasonal basis for larger garden machinery that lies idle through the winter.
Hidden Storage Inside the Home
Creating a space just for storing DIY equipment makes sense in most households, which can be a little chaotic for all of us, especially those with young children.
Consider all the spaces in the house to identify an area you can customise for tool or supply storage. Maybe use the area under the stairs, or even the unused space beneath kitchen cabinets. Under those cabinets is lots of long, flat space that we never normally use. It’s ideal for stowing items like paint trays and brushes, extending poles, rolls of wallpaper for future projects, or even step ladders depending on how long your run of cabinets is. All it takes is the removal of kickboards, which you then replace with either lift-up or sliding doors. The conversions would be a useful DIY project.
Giving tools the storage considerations they need will keep them in good condition for years longer. You can say goodbye to DIY projects always costing more because you need new tools every time.
