I wanted to throw this out there to see whether the community had any better ideas. I presently store my flavors in a drawer. It works, but it is getting difficult to tell what I have, what I need more of, and sometimes to find the the flavor I am looking for.
This is what I’m dealing with. The flavors are in alphabetical order by flavor name. It makes it easier to find them, but its far from perfect. Any addition pretty much requires shifting all the other flavors to make room. I have 3 bottles of CAP Juicy Peach, and 3 bottles of TPA Whipped cream, as well as quite a few other duplicates. I’m looking to have a system where I can tell at a glance what flavors I have and how much I have of any flavor. @BoDarc showed me his system, which amounts to a computer index and a bunch of little tiny handwritten labels on caps. It is better than what I have, but managing something like that is time consuming. I dont want my flavors sitting out in the light either, so something like spice rack shelves isn’t ideal. Add to that the extensive variance in bottle shape/size, from little 1 dram sample bottles to 50ml cosmos or 30ml unicorns, it is hard to come up with solutions.
Agree, just scrolled the whole thread to find a whole bunch of people living with the same problem, making do the best they can. Lots of spice racks and boxes and every other thing, but nothing that makes me go “yep, thats it”.
I think inventory and organized storage are entirely different concepts. If you have an inventory management system - perhaps one that tracks usage as you make recipes - your storage system could be lawn and leaf bags, you’d still know how much is in each bottle.
Honestly I’ve often wondered if this was something that could be accomplished with ELR. I mean there is a place to enter your flavors and bottle size. How cool would it be if whenever you mix a recipe, on the recipe itself, you could click a button “make this” and it would subtract the quantities used in your inventory? Cool huh? Then, what if you could set alerts which reminded you to order more when you reach a pre-determined inventory of a given flavor? Better yet, an alert and then automatically add it to your shopping cart! Woot woot!
Yeah, I know. People like me have grand ideas but no clue what implementation involves. And frankly I don’t care. I just want to click the buttons
This! Although i have donated i would gladly pay a monthly subscription to ELR if this were available. I rarely use the recipe side and have not entered my stash due to a lack of an efficient way to do so. I would like an individual brand check lists that one could simple scroll through and tick off… This would also allow you to see what flavors your missing or might want to try. This system would also make the transition from mixing by volume to mixing by weight wayy easier.
As far as organisation i think shelving units are far superior to tackle boxes and or drawer systems. Mine are on shelves in alphabetical order. Where are all my green apple flavorings? Top left shelve=easy VZ wild berry- bottom right-easy. Although i enjoy mixing i want to be able to mix with speed and efficiency when i have an aha moment or am feeling inspired, without the need for a ritualistic set up, prep stage. I am lucky to have an entire den where no sunlight can reach for said shelving units.
I suffer from inventory problems as well. I don’t have an extra room/man cave. I also have s two year old so I have to drag everything out, set up, mix, clean up, and put it all away. The wife did clear me two shelves in the laundry room with instructions to not take over any more space. Trying real hard not to do that, but my space is already almost full. I still have some, well a lot of flavors, I still want. I have my dream set up in my mind. I just need the room to put it in. One day.
@daath said that’s in the works.
Inventory Control would be really nice like @sthrnmixer envisions.
Automated ordering would also be very cool - point your shopping list (with a flavor SIZE parameter, ie: 30ml, 15ml, etc.) and say order everything from [vendor_X] would be really nice (add everything to your shopping cart in the size you want, then you can manually add/remove more stuff and do the final checkout)- anything left over that the vendor doesn’t carry would still remain in your cart, everything ordered would be added to your flavor list with the size/price paid pre-filled – as well as noting duplicates (ie: you have 2ml of flavor_Y left, and you ordered a new 30ml bottle of flavor_Y, so your new total would now be 32ml.
Downside to this is when you make flavor substitutions and you hit the “Mix This” button, then that substituted flavor won’t get subtracted - unless you edit the recipe - then hit “Mix This.”
I know a lot of people use things like nail polish racks or lipstick racks or whatever. If a nail polish rack holds 20 bottles, I’d need 30+ of them to hold everything and where am I gonna put all that? LoL. I keep most of my flavors in plastic drawers I picked up at walmart and I stack them all in a corner of my room. I have two plastic bins: one for the bigger RF VG bottles and one for the LB glass vials and my mixing stuff like PG, VG, Nic, Scale, mixer, etc. I have them organized by brand, but some brands are two layers deep. I still have to do a lot of fishing and it’s not great for knowing how much of stuff I have on hand, especially since replacement bottles are in a bigger tub underneath where I store all my bottles and cotton. So, it’s not a super effective solution, but until I have space and a thousand or more dollars to spend on something better, it’ll have to work.
Preformatted textI have had to do a cheap fix but works great. I filled my cabinet and made a box with shelves out of dollar store foam board. The board a straight edge, box cutter and hot glue gun and you can make great stuff.
I used the black board
