[hackerspaces] Circuits lab organization and parts retention for noobs

[Shirley Hicks]

Good afternoon everyone,

The Red Mountain Makers in Birmingham is in the process of organizing and binning parts from donated defunct equipment. 

Do any of you have notes, write-ups or links regarding how to decide what to recycle and what to keep? Any recommendations regarding how much to keep on hand? The person who is organizing the work (me) is a relative noob to lab organization, and those who are parting the stuff out have packrat tendencies. :) Our lab guru who is guiding us has given some general recommendations, but his experience is within a development workplace with far more resources than we currently have. 

By way of example, we have 2 paper box sized bins of SATA drive cables, and a similarly sized box of VGA cables. 

My main concern is managing the supply while we shuffle the space to accommodate renovations. It's all binned and on racks, but isn't clustered beyond like with like (first sort). I have electronics recyclers coming in two days. 

Thanks!

Shirley Hicks
RMM Secretary