“Organizing” is not necessarily a bad thing. Everytime you touch a tool it helps to remember where it is. It is far worse to have to stop in the middle of a job to hunt for a specific tool, buy another one, or try to make do without.

There are several ways to organize the tools. Big tools and little ones, hand tools and power tools, sensitive tools and rough ones, but my personal favorite is by the trade. Electrical tools in one or several boxes, rough in plumbing for drains in another, supply lines in another, framing tools in one and finishing in another. As you might guess, having many different types of boxes helps so you can easily see the difference. And there will probably be one box that has commonly used tools, perhaps a drill box.

This type of organization is more helpful when work is also organized by similar trades so that all the drain work is done and then all the electrical work is done… In this way the vehicle can have mostly tools of one trade in it at a time. But this will also require some off vehicle storage. A folding hand truck is very helpful to move from one to the other. Developing a good amount of intuition is also very helpful to knowing what you will need in any particular day.

Any organizational system is mostly destroyed by helpers who will not abide or understand it. It is also very difficult to maintain an organizational system that is not organic but suggested from the outside.