Solve Garage Storage Issues With Strong Stackable Bins

Anyone who’s ever built a project bike or rescued a basketcase knows that loose parts are the devil’s playthings. Incomprehensible at times, they are also prone to being scattered or lost, clutter up your floorspace and bench, and in general make shop life logistically awful until they’re eventually fitted to your machine. Solve this with stackable storage boxes and crates to keep your workspace shipshape while helping to efficiently categorize the different parts of your build. But organizing parts offers another benefit you might not guess at first glance: sanity. Keeping complex projects well-organized lowers stress and frustration and, in doing so, adds measurable enjoyment and value to your project. Here are a trio of storage containers we’d like in our garages.

Available in black, black/gray, or black/red, this four-pack of 27-gallon bins should hold much of a disassembled motorcycle, minus the bulky frame, fork, and wheels—as long as we’re not talking Harley-Davidson Tour Glide or Honda Gold Wing here! Plus, the “deep lids” mean the Tough Totes are stackable in case you need to double up on the volume and have limited floor area for storage. The insides measure 25 inches long, 15 inches wide, and 13 inches high. Incidentally, the plastic bins and lockable lids have strengthening channels molded for increased rigidity and durability.

Shhh! Don’t tell your spouse but this 150-gallon outdoor storage container that she or he thought was for deck-furniture cushions and garden gnomes is perfect for storing a motorcycle frame, wheels, and tires (ask us how we know!). The lockable Keter Westwood box features useful gas-charged lid-lift struts, and the more of these rectangular boxes you have, the more bike frames and parts you can squirrel away outdoors, protected from the elements between the potted ferns. See? Life’s a win-win game after all.

“Paranoia strikes deep/Into your life it will creep,” Buffalo Springfield sang in 1966’s For What It’s Worth. And that’s how we used to feel when going dirt-bike riding with discarded milk crates—with the words “warning” and “liable to prosecution” clearly stenciled on one side!—holding our gas cans, Bardahl VBA two-stroke oil, and Chain Life bungeed onto the trailer. Well, now you can lawfully buy all the sturdy classic milk crates you want. This blue Farmplast product has a big 24-quart capacity and is said to “easily support a heavy person.” Which means, to our way of thinking, we can also turn it upside-down and huck our dirt bike on top for on-site maintenance, as long as there’s not too much clearance under the skid plate. The crates are stackable too.