OT: Sorted!

[The Medway Handyman]

Spent the afternoon sorting the van - everything came out including all the organiser cases. To be fair, it was a mess, has been since about November. I find that when I finish on these dark cold nights stuff gets thrown in rather than stored properly.

Amazing what you find innit?

Two half full boxes of PZ2 bits, three half boxes of different size multi monti's, around 800 plastic plugs, half a dozen tubes of Gripfill, 400 8 x

2" screws, several packs of brackets, a brand new tub of filler, a bag of plastic shims, a 7mm extra length SDS bit, and a set of flat bits I'd forgotten I had etc.

What is really annoying is that I've assumed I'd run out of most of these items & re ordered. I reckon I've spent around £50 on stuff I already had but couldn't find. Note to self, keeping organised saves money.

One question for the pipe stranglers here - how do you keep all your tube/pipe fittings organised? I didn't get around to sorting the two plastic boxes of plumbing bits.

[Grimly Curmudgeon]

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember "The Medway Handyman" saying something like:

I have a pile of tough cardboard boxes, about 7"lx5w"x4"d with tight-fitting full-depth lids that slide over them. In these I store all the fittings, marked on each lid. They all sit in a supermarket vegetable delivery tray about 2'l x 1'3"w which is supported on a shelf. Currently the pile is about 3 high, 2 deep and 6 or 7 long.

I blagged those boxes years ago from the back of a factory skip and haven't found anything like them since. Luckily I've still got a couple of hundred left.

[geoff]

In message , Grimly Curmudgeon writes

For smaller items, scrounge some suture boxes from the operating theatre of your local hospital

[Dave Plowman (News)]

There were decent sized and strong organiser boxes on offer in B&Q a while back - branded Stanley, and seem to have better than the average plastic. I bought a few - and one is used for pipe fittings. Another for cable clips - the boxes those come in spill everywhere. ;-)

[John Stumbles]

My van's full of drawers which are actually various-sized industrial-grade polyproylene euro-size boxes, mostly 300x400 in various depths which stack together. That takes care of my compression and threaded fittings and much much else besides. Some 600x400 (IIRC) take bigger stuff like waste fittings & cistern valves (part II brass, side & bottom plastic diaphragm, side & bottom torbeck). Some orange string-type bags like the ones you get onions or firewood in hold traps and wc connectors, hung from the roof/side seams inside. Long canvas toolbag holds the pipe bender and solder fittings. Some Wickes clear poly rubble sacks hold speedfit: one for 15, one for 22 and one for mixed size fittings (e.g reducers & reducing tees).

Tube goes in twin rocket launchers on the roof (lengths of 4" soil pipe). Plastic in an open-(back)ended one and copper in one with a padlocked cap.

And my van's a mess at this time of year too: too dark to sort out in the evening & too miserable most weekends.