How do you all do it?

jr roosa, you should drive down 50 miles from phx and come get this 2 Below fat tire product out of my refrigerator then, I can't stand it.
Mine is small, semi organized, converted TV stand in the computer room. Keeps me out of the bars, wife smiles, keeps me doing something productive, wife smiles, saves money and lets me AND wife go shooting more often, wife grins!

Sounds like you need larger containers.



I have my brass down to three catagories, dirty, clean unloaded and loaded.

I have a ton of those $1 plastic containers from Wal-Mart, in each one goes a note telling what has been done to the brass. If it's 223 I note which rifle it's from since I load for 2 223 bolt actions. All bullets are stored on one shelf, all powder and primers in a metal box on the wall. Right now my crusade is to load up all those partial boxes of rifle bullets from testing loads. Not particularly time effective, but it's good to reduce the clutter from partially full Sierra boxes.

I cast and reload 9 and 45. Reloading is done from my easy chair believe it or not. Everything within a 5' radius of the chair is covered in equipment, boolits and casings. God forbid anyone come over to visit, they'd have quite a look on their face.

My bench and general reloading "area" is an absolute disaster at the moment.

I do a lot more loading/less shooting in the winter months, and I will have it neat as a pin by spring, but it doesn't seem to last long. I would say my mess is more of a yearly "cycle".

Psychiatrists say:"A clean and tidy reloading bench is the sign of a sick mind!

Click to expand...

The SCARY part is, no matter how cluttered and disorganized it gets, I know where everything is and I manage the mess well until I have time to get caught up.

Rembrandt
I believe your post demonstrates exactly what I stated. The fact that they are “more productive” and “perfectionists” demonstrates their need to show how wonderful they are to the outside world. Hitler was pretty productive when it came to death and destruction. Tell me he didn’t have a sick mind!

As a youth, I visited family on the east coast. I had the opportunity to go bluefish fishing with my cousin and his grandfather. Grandpa was a neat freak. When we found a school of blues, my cousin and I instantly had fish on. Grandpa very carefully placed the fish in the cooler and wouldn’t allow us to throw in until he had wiped up all the blood and small fish the blues puked up. It seemed like 30 minutes for each cleanup (probably was only 5- 10) before we were allowed to throw in and instantly had 2 more on, and so this continued.

Another boat came into the school with two unkempt fishermen, who proceeded to haul in fish after fish, dumping them quickly in the bottom of the boat and then throwing back in to instantly get another. As the school disappeared, we had drifted close enough to see the floor of their boat. In less than half the time we had been in the school, they had literally filled their boat. We had 12 fish. NOW!!!! Tell me the neat and tidy grandpa was more efficient and did better work.

To those that say ,"Have a Holly Jolly Rama-Hana-Chris-Quan politically correct time of year." I say Bahhhh! HUMBUG!!!! Merry Christmas!

You know, in addition to bench storage and organization,

we also learn in this thread how truly complete some reloader's set ups are done.

Notice, for example, how Walkalong is very thorough. As you can see in his post, he even has hung a blast blanket up behind the primer storage....



Jim H.

I think the key to organization is getting things "up". If you walk into a typical cluttered garage, the floor is covered but there's little to nothing occupying the space above 3'.

For my press parts, I got one of those little cabinets from Lowe's. Keeps the small parts organized and very easy to find.

You can get a pack of Acro bins with a wall rail for less than $10 at Home Depot. Peg board is your friend.

I've got a cabinet (free) that came out of a school that was being renovated. Nice thing is that the drawers slide out so you can get to stuff in the back. Fixed shelves hide too much stuff.

I can get off on the switch cabinet, Walkalong. In the '70s I helped build a 100-acre private estate in British Columbia. We drilled a 700-foot tunnel through the mountain side, built a dam, and put in a 600-horsepower (at 600-v) powerhouse / hydroelectric plant....

Meanwhile we ran on standby in our office / shop building--a 50 KW stationary CAT unit.

If I'd stayed there, we probably would have put in a range as well--but then the new Canadian gun laws would have crossed us up, I suspect.

Jim H.

Sounds like what you need is more effective utilization of the space you have.

A series of "book case" shelves going from floor to ceiling should do it. Don't make the individual shelves wider than about 7 inches nor longer than maybe two feet, otherwise you'll loose things in the back and the shelves will sag under the load. And don't make the distance beween shelves more than maybe 9-12 inches, varied some so you have options for different sized items.

And store rapidly changeable volumes of things like cases in zip lock baggies with notes inside, not boxes which take up the same space empty as full.

I have brass in only 2 stages: Brand new, and cleaned, deprimed, & sized. After a range trip I tumble the brass, decap and resize it, then store it. When I decide to reload, I begin by cleaning the primer pocket, case expansion, priming, charging, seating, crimping. I don't keep brass in any stage other than new, and cleaned, decapped, and sized. That cuts the clutter. And I always know where to start my routine.

Bullets are organized by caliber, primers are in a large plastic tub. It works well. I have a lot of stuff but I know where it all is.

Now the grips and mags drawer is a bit less organized, and let's not get into the holster drawer which is a whole file cabinet drawer. When i want a holster I start digging.

Shoe/boot boxes and coffee cans with a lid are good for brass storage. And a roll of masking tape.
Shelving isn't terribly expensive. The kind you bolt a rail to a wall. Or a metal cabinet from a used office supply shop. Or those metal shop shelves.

I am with Hesenwine, ziploc bags and sticky notes. Works for me. I even put loaded ammo in ziplocks if I don't have a box for it. I made some fill in the blanks labels (with the word processor) for loaded ammo. Just fill out a label and stick it on the bag.

Ziploc bags and sticky notes are helpful. I label small lots of brass and then put them in a large tupperware-like bin.
Small shelves are also helpful. I built a wall mounted reloading bench with several shelves that keep the most used items near at hand and organized. Also saves space in my gun room over a regular desk/bench setup.
I keep the small plastic bullet containers that I get from Midway, etc., and reuse them for small tools/accessories. I just label them with a Sharpie.
A friend of mine has a free PDF file of brass checklist labels on his website at: tacticoolproducts.com. Just print out, cut into separate pieces and stick into the bag with the brass. Then as you do the next step of processing, check it off. Tells you at a glance what stage this particular bag of brass is in. If you can't find the PDF file, shoot me a PM with your email address and I'll be glad to send it to you.

I use 50 cal ammo cans that are painted different colors for different stages . Then I stencil the cal on the side of the cans .For the powder and primers I use the wooden grenade boxes ,seperate of course .The cans stack on each other really good.

I use file cabinets, Tupperware and dog treat containers. Keep the bullets in 5x5x5 Tupperware containers in the lowest drawer. Powder and primers stay in their original containers in the top drawer. The other file cabinet has both drawers full of clean brass only in 7x5x10 dog treat containers, with the caliber marked on the lid.

On a side bench I have 10 one litre mixing cups marked for one caliber each for dirty brass. When one of the cups get full I just tumble the brass and put it in the file cabinet with all the clean brass. All my gun cleaning and lube products sit on that bench as well. My cleaning patches all come in large plastic bags I simply put 4 small hooks in the wall above the side bench and hang them there (makes it easy to see when I'm getting low on patches). All my dies sit on that bench along with a Plano fishing lure container full of shell plates, locator buttons and powder funnels for my Dillon press.

On my loading bench I keep my press (DUH!!), powder scale and a small 4" vise. I use peg board on the wall behind the bench to hold bench wrenches, primer pickup tools, primer tray, bullet puller hammer and digital caliper. With the two drawers below my bench I keep cleaning rods, wire brushes and misc small cleaning stuff. The other drawer has all my hammers, files, pin punches and dremil adapters.

LOL. Coffee cans and plastic shoe boxes are just other reloading tools for me.