Slabs in boxes

Nothing complicated here. I use plastic shoe boxes. I can stack them and they're about the right height for my slabs. There's some room on top where I usually end up laying some in horizontally.

Storing slabs is easy for me, plastic shoe boxes and larger plastic boxes with about 3 times the capacity of the shoe boxes, about 13 or 14 of each. Sorting slabs out and being able to put my hands on particular material has not been solved. A good method has not popped into my head yet.

We are in the unpacking process, moved in here slightly over a year ago. Buying a place with serious rehab needs for the home you retire to for hobbies and travel may not have been the ideal choice, especially in the atmosphere of the past couple years, but here we are, organizing slowly.

Just plain rough rocks, chunks, and bits are mostly in buckets or crates, with some higher end stuff in labeled cardboard boxes or the occasional plastic tub, which theoretically will replace the cardboard eventually. The bulk of this is in a storage container out back, some is in the saw and shop building.
Slabs that aren't graded or sorted go in cardboard boxes at this point, and a few tubs we have accumulated. Some are ziplock baggies inside the boxes if theres a amall amount or an individual slabbed rock we want to keep together. Most or all is supposed to be in the shop building until sorted, but currently may be found in the container as we make room in the shop building to re-roof it. The long term plan is slabs that we don't plan to keep will live in the container until enough large black widows have moved in that it's time to process them to sell.
Slabs that we want to turn into cabs, beads, and little stuff like that go in what we call the "guest" shop, a 8x30 room on our guest house that we converted to a lap shop. There is currently a largish metal cabinet with 6x6x12 deep drawers we are labeling for sorted slabs, drawers are way too big for the intended use and it will allegedly move to the saw shop at some point for some other use, maybe fresh saw slabs once slab production slows down. There is a set of shallow drawers the size of a tall dresser that was originally built for sports cards storage and display, works well for slabs after we removed some of the dividers. This is filling as time permits to sort our slabs properly, and if we follow anything resembling a logical plan may transition from slabs ready to process to cabs and display/collector slabs as we continue, we'll see how that goes. There is also a home or high school shop made, fairly well constructed small wooden unit like the one liveoak has for cabs, we'll see how that goes. I will maybe get a couple of those Amazon art boxes for in our trailer for on the road stuff, assuming we ever get to that. We also have a small plethora of the metal cabinets with the small clear plastic drawers typically used for fasteners, preferrably earmarked to store cabs that are intended to be set in jewelry pieces.
The "workbenches" in the cabbing "guest" shop are a merry mix up of kitchen countertops on recycled cabinet bases, a custom rotating workstation, and a rolling bench a wood worker might use, the lower cabinets all have drawers as well, most devoted to tools bits and shop supplies, but a few have things like somewhat sorted components for intarsia, doublets, and carving blanks.

Have been thinking about how to effectively store slabs a bit more so that it is easy to find particular slabs it seems in my case the big issue is that the number and variety of slabs is not a constant. The number and variety is continually growing as more slabs and different material are added to the "pile". That's not a horrible problem but it does make finding something I cut 3 or 4 years ago a "snipe hunt" of sorts!!

About 3 years ago I sorted through all the slabs I had. The first sort was "keepers" or "not-keep". The ones in the not-keep pile were all thrown in a bucket and used for breaking up into tumble cushioning material. The keeper slabs were then sub-divided into categories; Brazilian Agate, Scenic Jaspers, West Texas Plume and Bouquet, Palm Wood and Petrified Wood, Crazy Lace, Obsidian, Copper material, High End material, and a couple others. That was great except I began cutting material that did not fall into any of the existing categories; Bloodstone, Flint Ridge, Deming Material, etc, etc... On top of that about 20 to 30% of the material I cut is unknown(the downside of buying estate material). It's just not feasible to have labeled boxes for each type. 

Will continue to ponder this conundrum realizing that there may not be an elegant solution. That and I am definitely not ready to give into the Dark Side and begin to think the un-thinkable, "I have too many rocks and slabs"!!! (That's akin to Gandalf uttering the inscription on the one ring in the language of Mordor!!)