Organize Tools With A Pegboard, step by step

Swift note: For now we simply have plenty of rain and a few wind gusts thanks to Hurricane Sandy, but things are supposed to get a bit rougher later today and tomorrow so we expect to be without power for a while (although we will post remotely whenever we can). We hope everyone else is staying safe and dry!

Since pegboards are my new go-to thing, you knew I was bound to write another basement organization post that mentions them (along with some other methods to contain/control things like screws and nails) right?

Here is how I brought some sexy back to the basement (which I lately began to clean up after a yard sale, a bagster pickup, and some yard tool organization).

Next up on the organization to-do list were my regular tools. We in fact made the decision to relocate most of our tools to the basement after years of being weirdos who stored them in our kitchen drawers. We will still keep duplicates of a few popular items – like hammers, nails, and caulk – in our sunroom (where everything’s been living most lately) but having the rest of our arsenal neatly hung/stored in one place (aka: the basement workshop) certainly outweighs the extra trouble of walking down to the basement now and then to get a few things.

So we began this phase of basement org by trucking everything down (i.e. drawers, toolbox, etc) to the basement so I could begin sorting. Forgive the sucky pictures. Sherry was using the camera for another project so I was stuck taking phone pics.

First I spread everything out on the work table to see what I had and how I might categorize everything.

Going through everything was kind of a weird, sentimental walk down memory lane. It was simply so funny to see old items that were hanging around after projects from the past, like our old kitchen knobs and the clothespin chandelier that we made.

How could we forget those eyeball-ish kitchen knobs?

I also found tools with some memories behind them. Like the Boy Scout pocket knife passed down from my Papa (sidebar: I was the first in the line of my male cousins on my mom’s side NOT to become an Eagle Scout. I began and stopped right at Cub Scout. #blacksheep). And there was the first set of screwdrivers that my dad gave me back in high school (at the time I am sure I accepted them with some sort of angsty “when will I ever use these stupid things??” type of look).

My dad in fact gave me those screwdrivers along with the toolbox below, which traveled with me to college and even to New York – although for most of its lifespan it has held a measly three or four tools. But one reason I have kept it is because my dad taped a picture of his family inside. The couple on the right is my grandfather Emanuel and his second wife Helen. His first (my dad’s mom) died when my dad was young. She’s the Clara that our bean is named after.

But sufficient sentimental stuff. On to the pegboard! After a couple of hours (and a trip to Home Depot to buy a set of pegboard hooks) my tools at last looked like they consistently should have: orderly and ready to go.

Here is a couple of closer shots for ya, in case you are like me and enjoy staring at pegboards full of tools for extended periods of time.

This in fact is not everything. We chose to keep paint & craft supplies (i.e. glue gun, staple gun, etc) upstairs in the sunroom along with a few other essentials (like picture nails and anchors, along with a hammer and caulk) since we tend to use them more in the house than in the workshop. And I stashed a lot of my project-specific tools in the toolbox (at last it is getting use!) so I know that is where to go when I need plumbing or electrical supplies.

I could stare at those pegboards all day. But then I would not get any actual work done. And sadly I still had this crazy drawer full of screws, nails, and other hardware that was crying out for assist.

So I used a similar process to sort them. First I spread everything out on the table and began grouping similar items. Then those similar items went into mason jars together.

I in fact had a bunch of mason jars sitting around from a failed project Sherry tried taking on. She was going to repackage our vacation time capsules into smaller jars… but realized too late that the stout new jars that she picked up obscured the items inside too much (so taller mason jars like the ones we used originally in fact work best). So the too-short jars got passed down to me after she had already spray painted the silver tops a cool midnight blue color. Lucky me.

But Sherry’s pint-sized hand-me-downs were not quite sufficient for my sprawling assortment of screws, so I did have to invest in some (even smaller) half-pint jars myself (from JoAnn with a 50% coupon).

Here is everything once it had found a jar to call home. Do not mind the pieces of paper sticking out of them. Those were labels from the hardware packaging that I hung on to so I could remember what was what (since I planned to hand-write my own labels later).

Once everything was labeled and canned, I stuck them up on this shelf that the previous owner had built in above the work surface (do not mind the edge that looks like it was once on fire – we plan to stain it all soon).

The shelf spacing is a bit much for these compact cans, but it is not worth rebuilding the shelves or anything, so I am simply glad they are here to house my collection.

As for the labels, I simply picked up some 1.5 x 1.5″ square Avery labels at Staples for a few bucks and hand wrote the info on the front. I debated printing them on the computer to make them look slightly fancier, but I figured that was a system I’d never keep up with.

Eventually I hope to take these two projects a step further by painting the pegboards and staining the shelf as I mentioned (along with some other items in the room like the built-in work table). We think that’ll truly assist pull things together and make it look a little more workshop-swanky as opposed to old-ignored-basement. I do not think I am going to go too over-the-top with things in the basement simply because I like to be realistic about what is worth my time and what is easiest to maintain over time. Which is why I have chose to pass on the idea of outlining my tools on the pegboard, since I feel like it’ll simply create frustration when I have to add or subtract a tool and do not want to repaint the whole thing. But who knows, I could change my tune someday (Sherry mentioned chalk outlines since those are easily changed, but we do not want chalk dust all over our stuff so we later both dismissed that option).

I was simply grateful that the drawers I was bringing back upstairs to the sunroom were looking much more clutter free. So these are the items we kept upstairs since we think we will use them more up there while the rest makes more sense to keep together in the workshop.

And while my newly organized tools and hardware supply was making me quite confident about how the basement was shaping up, let us be reminded that I still have this to deal with: the wall o’ paint, spray paint, and other buckets. But that is a project for another day…

Okay, so who has a pegboard obsession? Is anyone else planning to paint and stain things in the basement for a little more of a wrapped up look? Do you have a hard time figuring out which tools should stay out in the garage, basement, or attic and which ones should be inside and straightforward to grab? I gotta admit that once we spent a few minutes thinking about what we use upstairs vs. what we use in the workshop it truly was not too tough to commit to keeping stuff in the areas that make the most sense.

Psst – We at last have our apple picking photos up on the house Life (spoiler alert: Clara’s life was made when she got to be a worm, well, a caterpillar).