I have a TON of small components and tools, and maybe my system could be helpful:
I keep several shelves full of stacking storage boxes in my garage. I’ve given each of these a unique number, written in permanent marker on the front face and lid of each. I chuck things mostly randomly in whatever box has some space, and then I track those newly added/removed items in a spreadsheet (more specifically, I just use a text file and treat the line numbers as the respective bin number — primitive, but works better for my workflow than something like Google Sheets).
I’ve found that trying to keep an immense inventory “organized” is too daunting (what happens if I overflow one bin — do I dedicate an entire bin to the one or two items that wouldn’t fit, leaving this bin mostly empty? Ugh!), and the only real utility with keeping things categorically collocated is to retrieve/store items efficiently anyway — by introducing a layer of indirection, I get the end result I’m looking for with a fraction of the work.
I keep several shelves full of stacking storage boxes in my garage. I’ve given each of these a unique number, written in permanent marker on the front face and lid of each. I chuck things mostly randomly in whatever box has some space, and then I track those newly added/removed items in a spreadsheet (more specifically, I just use a text file and treat the line numbers as the respective bin number — primitive, but works better for my workflow than something like Google Sheets).
I’ve found that trying to keep an immense inventory “organized” is too daunting (what happens if I overflow one bin — do I dedicate an entire bin to the one or two items that wouldn’t fit, leaving this bin mostly empty? Ugh!), and the only real utility with keeping things categorically collocated is to retrieve/store items efficiently anyway — by introducing a layer of indirection, I get the end result I’m looking for with a fraction of the work.