We have long ago figured out it pays to buy in bulk - especially with items we often use. A trip to town to buy a needed bolt or screw is expensive when you factor in the cost of fuel and labour. Screws, nuts and bolts along with most other hardware are much cheaper when bought in bulk as well. The downside is that you need to store these things logically and handily. Initially, we built shelves and as our collection grew, we eventually graduated to homemade bins. The trouble is a fifty-pound box of bolts doesn’t fit in them and bins that large take a lot of room. Wall space has always been at a premium in our shop. A while back I was at our local hardware store. He was redoing his shelves and when I saw him emptying the old rotary nail bin I asked him if we could purchase it. The answer was yes and it was quickly loaded in our truck and on the way back to the shop. Each layer will hold hundreds of pounds of screws and bolts which means we can fit much, much more in a small corner of our workspace. As we filled each slot we whipped up some labels to make sourcing them really easy. Each year we get a little more organized.
