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Tips & Techniques

Organize Tools on the Job

A plastic bins help you locate your tools easily on the job site.

Issue 308 - July 2022

Whether we’re framing or doing finish work throughout the day, my brother and I end up using lots of tools, from cordless drills and pneumatic nailers to handsaws and wrenches. Often one of us puts down a tool without thinking about where it has landed, and we later end up wasting time hunting it down again. To keep tools somewhat organized, I’ve begun placing plastic bins at strategic locations around job sites. When either of us finishes using a tool, we drop it into the nearest bin. Then when we need a tool we just have to look in three or four bins to find it. And there’s a side benefit to the bins: At the end of the day we no longer have to round up the tools. We just tote the bins back to the job trailer and stow them.

—Mike Guertin, East Greenwich, R.I.

Edited and Illustrated by Charles Miller

Published in Fine Homebuilding #308


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