Organizing Screws, Bolts and Small Parts Without Losing Your Mind

The best small parts organizer for a workshop, for most people, is a 44-drawer plastic cabinet on the wall — the Akro-Mils 10144 at $41.09 as of October 2026. The 64-drawer cabinet beside it is the same shell, costs about 24 percent more, and by our sum of the published external drawer dimensions holds slightly less. But the cabinet is the easy half of this problem.

The hard half is the sorting scheme, and the scheme is what fails. Fasteners defeat every system built for tools because the unit of storage is a handful, not an object. A block plane has one home and one shape. Two hundred screws have neither. Our guide to garage tool storage and organization argues for getting tools onto the wall before you buy anything with drawers in it, and we stand by that order — but hardware is the one category where the container matters less than the question you ask when you reach for it. So we will do the scheme first and the boxes second.

How we picked

We have not handled any of these cabinets, and we are not going to pretend we have. Every dimension, material and feature below is the maker's published specification or a distributor's catalog figure and we say which. We also do not publish star ratings or review counts — our product data source does not supply them. Prices are as of October 2026 and move constantly.

Sort by the question you will ask at the bench

Nobody walks to the bench thinking "I need an M4." They think "I need something about this long that goes into wood." Sort to match the thought, not the catalog. In practice that means type first, then length.

• Wood screws by length. Length is the number you check against the thickness of the thing you are screwing into. Gauge is a second-order decision you make after.
• Machine screws and bolts by thread, then length. Here the designation really is the job, because the hole has one thread in it and nothing else will enter.
• Wall anchors by substrate — hollow drywall, solid masonry, or straight into a stud. Not by size. You pick an anchor by what the wall is made of before you know anything else about the job.
• Nails by length.
• Everything else in one drawer labeled misfits.

The designations are not labels, which is the part people get wrong. According to the wood screw chart published by Workshopcalc, gauge is a diameter code with a formula behind it — diameter in inches equals the gauge times 0.013, plus 0.060 — so a #6 is 0.138 in., a #8 is 0.164 in. and a #10 is 0.190 in. — thirteen thousandths of an inch per gauge number, so twenty-six thousandths across each of those two-number steps. Nail sizes are worse. As Wikipedia's entry on the penny as a unit records, penny sizes originally referred to the price of a hundred or a long hundred of nails in fifteenth-century England, which is why an 8d nail is 2-1/2 in. long, per the nail size chart at Build My Own Cabin, for no reason you could derive from the number.

So write on the drawer what the thing does, not what it is called. "Wood screws, 1-1/4 in." beats "#8 x 1-1/4." "Drywall — hollow" beats "#6 ribbed plastic." You will read that label in a hurry, in bad light, holding something in the other hand.

Then commit one drawer to misfits and mean it. Most systems collapse in month two, and they collapse the same way: one part-used bag of something that fits no category ends up on the bench, then there are three of them, then the bench is the system. A labeled misfits drawer is not a failure of discipline. It is the overflow valve that keeps the other forty-three drawers honest. The same principle governs drawers full of tools rather than hardware, which we work through in how to organize a tool chest.

Organizing hardware in a workshop: more drawers is not more storage

Here is the buying argument, and it is genuinely counter-intuitive.

Akro-Mils sells a 44-drawer cabinet and a 64-drawer cabinet. They are the same physical cabinet. Akro-Mils' own product pages give both shells as 20 in. x 6-3/8 in. x 15-13/16 in. — the Amazon listing titles round that to 20 in. x 6 in. x 16 in. — and on Amazon the two share a parent listing. The 64 does not add storage. It subdivides the same storage more finely.

Multiply the published external drawer dimensions out yourself, which is what we did. A small drawer is 6 in. x 2-7/32 in. x 1-9/16 in.: 6 x 2.21875 x 1.5625 is 20.8 cubic inches. A large drawer is 6 in. x 4-9/16 in. x 2-3/16 in., or 59.9 cubic inches. Sixty-four small drawers come to about 1,331 cubic inches. Thirty-two small drawers come to about 666 and twelve large to about 719, which totals roughly 1,384.

These are sums of external drawer dimensions, not usable internal capacity. Plastic has thickness and drawers have draft, so what actually fits in either cabinet is less than these numbers. The comparison between the two still holds, because both are measured the same way.

So the cabinet with twenty more drawers in it holds about 53 cubic inches less — call it 4 percent — and costs $9.90 more, which is about 24 percent. That is the whole argument against buying on drawer count.

The best small parts organizer for a workshop: Akro-Mils 44-drawer

This is the cabinet we would buy, and the drawer mix is the reason. Akro-Mils' own product page for the 10144 publishes both drawer sizes but not how many of each; distributor catalogs, Demco's among them, break it into 12 large and 32 small ("Cabinet includes 32 small and 12 large drawers"). We would treat that split as reliable but not as the maker's word.

That mix is what makes it right for a DIY collection. The twelve large drawers at 6 in. x 4-9/16 in. x 2-3/16 in. take the things that defeat small drawers entirely — 3 in. screws, wall anchors still in their plastic sleeves, hinges, caster wheels, a handful of T-nuts. The thirty-two small ones handle graded screws.

Two listed details are worth more than they sound. Keyhole slots are molded into the back, which is half the point of the article below. And Akro-Mils lists rear stop tabs on the drawers: the thing that stops a drawer coming all the way out and depositing eighty #8 screws on a concrete floor. Akro-Mils publishes no weight capacity for the cabinet, so we will not imply one.

At $41.09 as of October 2026, it is $8.80 more than the IRIS and $9.90 less than its own 64-drawer sibling.

The maximum-sort cabinet: Akro-Mils 64-drawer

We are not going to sneer at this cabinet, because it is the right buy for one specific reader: the person whose collection is genuinely fine-grained. If you sort machine screws by thread and length, or you keep electronics hardware, model fasteners, or a tap-and-die habit, then 64 labels beat 53 cubic inches without any argument.

For a reader with a jar of mixed screws, a bag of drywall anchors and some deck screws left over from a fence, it is the wrong cabinet — 1-9/16 in. of drawer height with no large drawers anywhere rules out exactly the awkward items you most want off the bench. The listing gives eight molded-in dividers for subdividing further still, which tells you who this cabinet is for; subdividing an already-small drawer is available and rarely useful.

Same shell, same keyhole slots, same stop tabs, $50.99 as of October 2026.

The budget cabinet: IRIS USA 44-drawer

At $32.29 as of October 2026 this is $8.80 under the Akro-Mils 44, and it is a fair fight rather than a throwaway third option. IRIS USA also lists it as made in the USA, and the listing gives its drawers as longer: 6.87 in. against the Akro-Mils 6 in., though the large drawers are listed slightly narrower across — 4.31 in. against the Akro-Mils 4-9/16 in. Treat the length advantage as the listing's figure rather than a settled one: IRIS's own product page for the 44-drawer cabinet gives both drawer sizes as 6.00 in. long, which reads as usable depth rather than an external measurement. Length is still the dimension that matters, because drawer length is the single most common reason a small-parts drawer fails — the screw you want is longer than the drawer and will not lie flat.

Two honest caveats. The listing gives both drawer sizes but does not say how many of the 44 are large and how many small, so unlike the Akro-Mils you cannot plan the layout before the box arrives. And at 7 in. deep against the Akro-Mils 6-3/8 in., it stands further off the wall, which you notice above a bench at eye level.

Get the cabinet off the bench and onto the wall

Both Akro-Mils cabinets list keyhole slots molded into the back, and IRIS says its cabinet can be wall mounted too. Use them. A parts cabinet on the bench occupies the one surface you need clear, and it is also the thing most likely to be knocked over.

Neither maker publishes a weight for a loaded cabinet, so there is no figure to design the fixing around — which is an argument for over-fixing rather than guessing. Find studs if you can. If you cannot, choose the anchor by the wall, not by the screw: according to Bob Vila's guide to drywall anchor types, plastic expansion anchors "can only bear about 25 pounds, even when several are used together," while toggle anchors "can hold 100 pounds or more depending on drywall strength." Forty-four drawers of steel fasteners is not a picture frame.

If the wall above your bench is already spoken for, the best garage shelving for tools will take a cabinet this size standing on a shelf instead, and Akro-Mils lists secure stacking so two can sit one on the other. And if the real problem is that the bench has no drawers at all, that is a different purchase — see the best tool chest for a home garage.

The box that travels: DeWalt 20-compartment Pro Organizer

A cabinet and a portable box are two different jobs. The cabinet is the library and it stays on the wall. This is the tray you carry to the far end of the house, loaded with the six things the job needs.

Every cheap compartment box fails the same way: it gets tipped, and twenty compartments become one compartment of mixed fasteners. So the only feature worth leading with here is the claim DeWalt makes on its own product page for the DWST14830 — that the lid design keeps small parts from moving between compartments. That is DeWalt's claim and we report it as one; we have not handled the box. The transparent polycarbonate lid earns its place too, because you can see whether the anchors are in there without opening it, and the removable dividers let you gang three compartments together for something long.

DeWalt's product page does not publish overall dimensions. Distributor catalogs, McCoy's among them, list it at 17-5/8 in. long by 11 in. wide by 2-7/8 in. high. If you already own DeWalt's other Pro organizers, the side latches stack it to the DWST14825 Deep Pro, the DWST14925 Shallow Pro and the DWST14835.

The habit that keeps the system alive

A sorting system rarely dies of bad design. It dies of one habit.

Decant the bag into the drawer the day you buy it. Not at the weekend. The box of sixty deck screws goes into the drawer labeled "deck screws, 2-1/2 in." before the receipt comes out of your pocket, and the empty carton goes in the bin.

And never let a part-used bag live on the bench. That is the actual failure mode. One bag is a mess waiting to happen; four bags is a pile nobody will sort, and at that point the cabinet on the wall is decoration. If the bag's contents have no drawer, that is what the misfits drawer is for.

Common questions

What is the best way to organize screws and bolts in a workshop?

By type, then by length, with the drawer labeled for what the fastener does rather than what it is called. Wood screws by length, machine screws by thread, anchors by substrate, nails by length. Then one drawer for misfits, so leftovers have a legitimate home instead of the bench.

How many drawers does a small parts organizer need?

Fewer than you think, and sized for what you own. The Akro-Mils 64-drawer and 44-drawer are the same cabinet, and our sum of the published external drawer dimensions puts the 64 about 4 percent smaller in total while costing about 24 percent more. Count the drawers you will actually label.

Are plastic drawer cabinets strong enough for steel fasteners?

Neither Akro-Mils nor IRIS publishes a weight capacity for these cabinets, so we cannot give you a number, and anyone who does is guessing. What the makers do publish is the construction: Akro-Mils lists a rugged high-impact polystyrene frame with clear plastic drawers, and IRIS lists durable, recyclable materials. Spread heavy items across drawers rather than loading one, and mount the cabinet to the wall rather than letting a loaded cabinet travel.

The short version

Build the scheme before you buy the box. Sort by type then length, label drawers with what the fastener does, and keep one drawer for misfits — that last one is why the system is still working in a year.

Then buy on drawer size, not drawer count. The Akro-Mils 10144 at $41.09 as of October 2026 is the one we would buy, because the 12 large and 32 small mix matches what a DIY collection actually contains, and because our own sum of the published drawer dimensions says its 64-drawer sibling holds about 4 percent less for about 24 percent more. Take the IRIS at $32.29 if the longer 6.87 in. drawers appeal more than a documented drawer split. Add the DeWalt at $24.98 when you are tired of carrying a cabinet drawer upstairs.

Then put it on the wall. The rest of the system it fits into — benches, chests, shelves and what goes where — is in our guide to the best garage tool storage.