Where to put stuff

[putney]

OUr booth is currently a disaster and about five faculty memebers at the school have told us to clean it up, we've tried and we find that there's nowhere to put supplies and mics and stuff. Any suggestions?

[soundlight]

Organization

Many of us have posted in this topic about organization. You will find a large number of organizational techniques explained and noted in this topic. The forum search engine is your friend. Someone on admin might want to merge them?

[putney]

Thanks, sorry I didn't see it.

[Chris Chapman]

It's a tough call on putting stuff where it will fit. My admin forced me to dump to 60ft dumpsters worth of scenic storage this year.

In our onstage storage area we keep all mic stands (locked when not in use) and a cable cart with limited monitor and mic cable.

A storage cabinet in our booth stores all headsets (12 Clearcom) beltpacks, wireless and sound production stuff. Our mics live in a roadbox secured in the booth.

[fosstech]

Our space has six places we put things in. The first is the stage right dimmer room. It's about 8x8 and houses our Sensor rack and amp rack, plus a large junction box for the three phase line for the dimmer rack. Everything sound related goes in there. Mics sit in their boxes/pouches organized based on type on top of the wall mounted amp rack. The Mackie wedges just sit on the floor in the corner, as do their stands which are used for special events outside the theatre. Cables are on cheap orange extension cord/christmas light reels (less than $2 at Big Lots). Those someday will possibly be mounted on the wall, but we don't have a board screwed in yet. Cables are color coded for length with spike tape at the plug. I have a cardboard box that sits in there that houses all the adapters and really short (<3ft) cables. There isn't a huge amount of stuff in there, so I don't feel a need for it to be organized. Usually I can find what I need quickly by just digging. The two "wandering" clearcoms stay in here when they're not being used. Lighting odds and ends also live in there, like extra gel frames, C-clamps, irises, extra safety cables and cases of lamps (we just got 48 BR40's for the borderlights...those things take up too much space!).

The booth houses all the electronics. Wireless mics and batteries live up there, as does the light board+monitor, sound board, sound rack, and the gel box/folders. Our booth is tiny, probably about 6x10, but we fit it all in quite nicely.

The tool room is where all the wood sits, and where all the tools live. A pegboard on the wall helps with organization...but orgainzation in the tool room is an oxymoron....

The paint room is where all paint supplies live. There's a big floor to celing cabinet in there, plus a big sink, and a large counter. FOH catwalk access is also from in there. The ladder takes you up into the celing, and over through the three foot tall door into the catwalk.

The prop room is where all of our props and costume gear goes. It's a small room, maybe 6x8, but it goes all the way up to the roof, which is about 15 feet high. A big ladder in there is used to get to the stuff at the celing. Any overflow from the prop room goes into the stage left wing where there are cabinets on the wall. The "magic box" as we like to call it (basically an overstocked first aid kit in a big wooden box painted in rainbow colors back when they did Dreamcoat a long time ago) lives in the left wing as well.

If we're really pressed for space, we use the green room. Our green room is larger than average. It's about the same size as your average high school classroom. The orchestra uses it for a classroom during the day so we can't permanently store anything in there that takes up more than about 1/3 the room. Large width double doors lead from the green room to stage left.

Pretty much all our lighting inventory is in use or at least hung at any given time. Every once in a while we'll have an extra S4 or something, which just goes on the floor in the dimmer room.

Phew...hope that gave you some ideas. Organization can really be a pain in the butt sometimes, but it needs to be done for you to know where everything is and to keep it from getting stolen or accidentally damaged.

Meanwhile, I have to go run an orchestra concert this evening...the first show in a constant stream of small shows for the rest of the school year ...orchestra, band, choir, dance concert, and a visit by the Washington Contemporary Ballet. Then it's summer break!

[drawstuf99]

For lighting (specifically fixture storage) I would strongly suggest getting some sort of lighting tree (not like a T stand thing) for storing the fixtures.

They are pretty easy to make, just get some thick piping from Home Depot. They will keep the fixtures hanging (so they can't fall over) and you have harder chance to knock a whole full bar of lights down than you do a few one by one. I have seen so many bulbs and fixtures break simply by sitting on the ground.

If you don't have the money to build a tree, you can do like I did one day during a work day. I just grabbed all of the fixtures, checked to be sure they worked, sorted them into what type they are (fresnel, source four, par...etc.) and then I found a long stretch of the railing in our loft and I just hung them all in a line so they were all organized and out of the way. Just be sure to use safety cables on all of them, even if they are just backstage on a tree. It cleans up clutter, and saves you money in the long run. Plus, its sorta cool to see a whole bunch of source fours all neatly lined up

It sounds more like you were talking about the booth, but this also could help you and others if you needed.

Good luck with the clean out

[ScaredOfHeightsLD]

We just cleaned up our booth at NHS and the three biggest tips I came up with are as follows:
1/ Look for non traditional storage for things you don't use that often (under tables in the booth, an attic, in the catwalk, onstage closets, any where there is space, throw stuff in a milk crate, label do not remove and let it be) Fortunatly, there aren't many people who use our space other than myself and the lighting crew so we pretty much have the run of the theatre and thus it's easier to find storage space.
2/ Look up, you might have exposed beams in your booth or catwalk, try grabbing some big yellow rubber encased hooks from HD or Lowes and screw them into the beams, they can be great for hanging cables and buckets with small things in them. ( remember safety cables and be cautious if you have a short ceiling.
3/ Throw stuff out. If you are like me you don't like to throw anything out, but look around and I'm sure you will find things that you can get rid of.
hope this helps

[soundlight]

I do believe that this topic was referred to the linked thread above. Questions and suggestions should be re-directed there, and that topic already has a significant amount of material that helps answer the question. And for the new members, we try to keep things limited to one thread. If there's already a thread on a topic (you find previous threads with the "forum search"), you should go ahead and bring it back, no matter how old, if it is relavent to your question or suggestion. Sorry if this seems kind of annoying after a while, but some members feel that it is appropriate to have one topic per set of related questions/suggestions.

[Chris15]

I am one of those which would prefer a single thread on a topic. Perhaps one of the staff would care to merge these posts into the existing thread?

[drawstuf99]

I would be careful about storing stuff in a catwalk (though if you're using it as a last result, go ahead) both from safety reasons (things falling) and usability.

I have tried storing cables and stuff that I've found we use most on the catwalk at our school, in the little room before you go into the catwalk. It works fine, but almost as soon as I put them there I always run into some crazy reason why we need a cable or something that has never been needed before and I gotta go through all the time to get up there.