Organising a Workshop Filing Cabinet

After reviewing too many transparent plastic containers from too many different suppliers I realised that the dimensions of the 5L water bottles were the most suitable to help with organising equipment stored in filing cabinets for our arduino workshops.

Step 1: You Will Need

A sharp blade and a scissor along with different coloured insulating tape and some empty 5L water bottles.
Start by drawing a straight thick line about 20cm long on some paper and place this on your desk.

Step 2: First Cut

Sitting at your desk, place the plastic bottle on its side, leaving
the cap on will make this task easier, use the sharp blade and make a starting hole and 1-3cm above where the bottle begins to narrow towards the neck. If the blade feels like it will slip place some masking tape on the bottle and cut the starting hole through the masking tape into the bottle. When using a sharp blade always cut items in a motion away from your body and away from the hand holding the bottle steady.

Step 3: Cutting the Bottle

Align the bottle on the desk above the straight line one the paper and with the scissors’ cut around the bottle following this straight line and rotating the bottle in steps until the top is removed. There are two reasons for using the sissors instead of the blade to cut around the bottle, as sharpe blades tend to be thin blades it is more difficult to cut a straight line in the plastic. It is essentially much safer and easier to cut a straight line with a sissors.

Step 4: Colour Coding

Then run some insulating tape along the cut edge of the bottle, this will protect hands from the sharp cut edges of the bottle and also colour code the bottles so that bottles containing similar items can be more easily identified . Then fold down the insulating tape sticking it to the inside edge of the bottle.

Step 5: In Use

Nine rectangular 5L water bottles or 8 square ones will fit snugly into one drawer of a filing cabinet making use of most of the space of each drawer while still allowing space for individual sections to be removed as needed.

Previously storing small equipment in filing cabinets required one to remove one section to access another section only to realise that the final section wanted was empty. :-(((

The same bottles can also be used in book cases as show above. If the items you intend to store in this way are small then cutting the bottle top off at a slope as show above may be more suitable. Smaller square based 2L water bottles also exist and I may find myself using them in a simular way sooner rather than later.