When I started DIY I stored my flavor bottles by: Size > Brand > Alphabetical flavor name, with:
- All 10ml and 15ml bottles in acrylic cosmetic organizer trays.
- All 30ml and 50ml bottles in a plastic cash register draw tray.
- All 100ml and 120ml bottles ended up, unsorted, in a drawer.
As I've bought more flavors, or restocked with larger bottles, they have ended up in too many places. I was just mixing up a new recipe but it took me 30 minutes to find 2 of the flavors!
TLDR; So my question is, do you find it easier if you store your flavor bottles by brand, or by flavor, or some combination or another system?
I have about 350 flavours. So easiest is alphabetically, as per description of what I have on my spreadsheet. So sure Sweet Guava goes under G there are exceptions of course.
And then I have seperate areas, for Vanilla, Cream, Menthol / Cooling, Tobacco, Chocolate.
That makes picking out a recipe take a minute at most.
The spreadsheet works well, it has both the name on the bottle as well as the "common" name, as well as category, and estimated amount left over, and date bought. Took a while to create, but so damn easy to keep up to date when you buy new flavours.
Get an organizer with some drawers in it. You can label each drawer and find what you need rather quickly. I have locations pretty memorized but labeling (Just tape and a marker) helps. You can also store it in a cool dark place. I decided long ago that I didn't want to have all my stuff out in the open. I have no need to display them. They all stay in a closet.
I organize by whatever's convenient. Some drawers are just labeled: Random Inawera, or Vanillas, of Berries. Sometimes I'll keep two kinds of flavors in the same drawer. For instance: Graham Crackers & Nuts, or Marshmallows & Meringues. If I make a recipe regularly, I'll keep those flavors grouped together in a ziplock bag.
Mine is stored by flavour, each bottle has a coloured sticker on top/side of top with a letter. I have 4 storage pots. Each little storage pot contains 3 different profiles/colours roughly 40 to 50 flavours. I have a database filled. I usually make up 6 recipes at a time. Go onto my recipes, highlight all of the flavours needed in the database and go pick them all. It's relatively quick. Say I want Yes we cheesecake, new york fa cheesecake, JF blueberry and FA bavarian cream, cool, blue g blue f, green a, white F. done. In reality with 6 recipes it's even easier as I'm picking several of the same colour at a time so could be just blue A D F M which is super easy to remember and pick out and I'm not going to grab more than that anyway then onto the next. I don't store anything bigger than 30ml in the pots. Above 30ml flavours are decanted into 30ml or smaller for picking. Anything that runs out that isn't stored in a bigger flavour I just take the cap out and leave it on my desk, then put it in a list to be reordered if I want to. If I woke up in the middle of the night and needed a flavour. I'd have it within 60 seconds. I guarantee. As I say, it's much faster when you're taking out many. You could use a database and stickers with other solutions but the colour is kinda matched to the flavour profile so easy to put back and if I want to go with the same profile but I slightly different flavour, they're right next to it.
I like the colored sticker idea. Does the letter allow using the same colored sticker for different groups?
In my spreadsheet I have a column of colored groups for my flavors, but there's 20 groups and some have the same colour but different colored text.
Bakery, Berry, Candy, Caramel, Cereal, Cheesecake, Chocolate, Cream, Custard, Dairy, Desert, Drink, Enhancer, Fruit, Gum, Jelly, Nut, Strawberry, Tobacco, Vanilla.
I think that's way too many for any fast picking because it's going to be hard to get one colour each (20 colours of sticker that show up) so you're going to have to hold in your head as you pick like custards blue C, dairy blue X instead of blue c or blue x for example. I'd be folding your groups into colours something like :
​
bakery,dessert
cheesecake,custard
vanilla,cream,dairy
berry,strawberry,fruit
candy,caramel,
chocolate,tobacco
nut,cereal
jelly,enhancer,gum,drink
​
they're not all going to fit perfectly but they don't all need to. I have 3 tobacco flavours so instead of having it's own colour it's tobacco + odd ones out like honeysuckle,milk and honey, rose, violet,calipitter chow. likewise my chocolate is folded into doughnut,and nuts because there's not enough of each. You'd need to customise it for size, if you've got over 26 in vanilla,cream,dairy for example then you could move vanilla to cheesecake custard though obviously some of yours overlap.
I have 12 workable colours so theoretically up to 312 flavours before I need numbers instead of letters. that would be up to 432 flavours then before I need either more colours or multiple digits.
I have almost 900 flavors, and I sort them by flavor house first, then by type, and I put them in acrylic lipstick racks if they fit. I always buy small first time I buy a flavor. Too many times I wasted my money because somebody said a flavor was wonderful and it wasn't for me. So I start with the 10ml. Larger bottles that wont fit on the racks go on a shelf. I have one very large drawer where I keep all my "replacements"...flavors I don't want to ever run out of, as well as flavors I may have gotten on sale or something. I guess they are all backups.Oh, I also have a smaller drawer where I toss the flavors I don't like. But I can't throw them away because someone may create a recipe that makes them taste good to me. I learned that from somebody around here. I pretty much know where most everything is, and a few I do have the general idea of where it is and with the way they are organized I can find anything quickly. I leave my flavors out because it makes me happy to see them! I love DIY though I still have plenty to learn after more than 6 years in.
That's pretty much exactly how I've been doing it since I started DIY 7 years ago. Except I only have about 190 flavors. I ran out room for the last 30 or 40 flavors I bought so each time I bought some new flavors, or restocked, each batch ended up in a different place. Some of them ended up on my computer desk hiding behind an old birthday card to keep the light off them. Two of them were the ones I spent 30 minutes trying to find because I forgot there were flavor bottles hiding there.
Ouch! That's rough! They aren't supposed to hide from ya! I have 2 bookcases right beside each other with all the racks on them. They don't get direct sunlight. Sounds like you just need a little more space and you'd be ok.
I try to keep them grouped by brand in little plastic bins, and then in roughly alphabetical order. I try to always put things back where I get them from, so I can reach in blind for my favorite bottles and know right where they are. I've got one bin for common flavors, ones I use in my top 5 or so mixed recipes, and then one bin for bulk 16oz bottles. I use atf to track my flavors (you can see the gluttony of my buying from when River Supply co. initially shut down and clearanced everything out for the PACT Act), and make sure to stop and manually add everything as I unbox it anytime I get a new order in. I can pull up a recipe from the site, or select to view what I can make with the ingredients I have on-hand, or even ones I'm just missing one flavor for so I can buy another and finish the recipe!
I bought a heavy duty storage cabinet about a year back to organize things a little better, and to give me back the use of a full half of my kitchen cabinets in the process!
We store ours by flavor. When making recipes, it’s much easier to locate them that way. Haven’t found the best storage system yet but they’re grouped on lazy susans presently. We’re rather specific — apple flavors together, pastry or custards together, grapes etc. Makes it a faster process.
I’ve got close to 150 flavors, and organize them terribly…
I have two 5x11 cloth bins that I’m storing them in. One bin has larger bottles, and the ingredients I use more frequently, but I’m still digging through 40ish bottles to find what I mix often. If I’m using an ingredient that I don’t use often I have to look through 100ish bottles until I find the right one.
After I remodel my home office next summer I intend on building a drawer that holds the bottles at a 45 degree angle and organize them by brand then alphabetical order.
I have 80 flavors strewn all about the inside of a cardboard box in a random pile. Complete and utter chaos. Finding the ones I need is a big hassle. At least there aren't 300 of them.
Hoping to get some kind of small drawer system soon to make things more enjoyable.