My fantasy is to have a huge room with floor-to-ceiling open shelves (NOT cabinets), so you can just walk in and set something down without having to think about where to stash it. No pattern, order or system; just on a shelf somewhere. Later, if you need it, it will be in plain sight, and since you see it every day, you will tend to remember where it is. Eventually, if you decide to store it away or dispose of it, fine, but in the meantime it will remain in the Limbo Locker until you decide its final disposition. This is the main function of the typical suburban garage, but it tends to fill up too quickly for some reason.

My friend Roger's dad was like that. He had a huge open shed in the back yard filled with everything from a '37 Packard transmission to a burned-out Dumont TV chassis. If you ever needed anything, say, hacksaw blades or porcelain door knobs, you could count on taking a stroll through the shed and finding TWO packs of them somewhere in there--both already open. It also tended to attract neat wildlife.