I'll be interested in other people's ideas on this topic too.
My strategy, based on watching professional tradespeople (for whom moving tools from job to job is a daily issue) is tool groups. Requires discipline which sometimes fails me but the system works when I make the effort:
Each group of tools travel together in one box. They are therefore always in one place, whichever place that might be. So I have a box for basic electrical tools, a separate box for electrical test tools and a third box for electrical cutting channels in walls and ripping up floorboards tools. Same again for plumbing, etc., etc.! Wood working tools are grouped but how you do that is more personal. It doesn't work for me having all planes together. I have to group by the sort of job. So there's a box I can use for jobs like hanging a door but a different group of tools for installing kitchen worktops. Obviously there's often an extra box of odds and ends specifically for a particular job.
However tempting it is to just grab a few bits from a kit and take them to a job I have to resist (or gradually gather them all back up again and restore the boxes.) Some kits are quite hefty boxes!
I also make sure there's a minimum toolkit that lives at key locations like the office, house, etc. containing tape measure, saw, screwdrivers, hammer, spirit level, screws, nails, glue, picture hooks, radiator bleed key, etc. so quick jobs can be done with the tools that are there.
Both the box system and the location toolkits mean some duplication of tools, but only the cheaper hammer and screwdriver type stuff as a rule.
That way the boxes can be seen as the stuff that comes home and lives in the workshop.
Does mean the back of the car would pass muster as belonging to a professional tradesman sometimes!
Tim.
From: "adminHBBR [via UK HBBR Forum]" <
[hidden email]>
Date: Sun, 23 Jan 2011 04:54:24 -0800 (PST)
To: Tim O'Connor <
[hidden email]>
Subject: Tool Fairies
As you know they creep out at night when we are sound asleep, move all your tools around and hide a few in places that will take you weeks to find.
Mine must be quite strong as they have hidden a rather chunky crow-bar - they must have seen us start to decorate the bathroom and realised the floorboards needing lifting to fit a chromed towel radiator.
I must have over 100 hand tools but alas no central location to keep them. The cycle between the shed at the bottom of the garden, our hobby room indoors, MilliBee my pocket cruiser, my late Dad's house and my car boot. The tool fairies are spoilt for choice as to where they can hide tools.
Can anybody suggest how to keep tools safe and secure from little fingers?
-Paul
Locked
also like to cover the workshop with a fine fairy dust that resembles sawdust & shavings, turning brightly coloured handles to the same dusky yellow colour. 
