Inventory

[HalfLife]

I have recently recovered... a lot... of passive and other components from my (mis)adventures.
I am talking on the order of ~40 lbs of loose and (few) originally packaged components. The volume is of course, enormous.
Ages vary from 1950s to present. Simple to complex (resistors to DAC and other ICs).

How do I attempt to inventory this. Seriously. There are hundreds of thousands of components.
Any ideas?

[alanp]

Break it down into categories, and then into subcategories. Grab a few big plastic bins to help with this, and some big plastic bags to go into the bins.

Similar to how you eat an elephant -- one bite at a time.

[mauman]

Break it down into categories, and then into subcategories. Grab a few big plastic bins to help with this, and some big plastic bags to go into the bins.

Agreed.  You can start with just two large bins and do a binary sort: Passive and Active.  Then Passive can be sorted into resistors, caps, pots, etc.  and Active into IC, transistors, etc.  Next round of sorting is by type (NPN, PNP) or value (R < 1k, caps > 100nF, etc.)  You can stop at any time, and each round adds more organization.  At some point you reach diminishing returns.  I stop when most of my plastic bags are about the same size, and I do another round if a bag gets too full.

[HalfLife]

Thanks all for the suggestions.
I have found 2 freeware programs for component organization that I will use as well. I have not evaluated them, so I will not rate them yet.
WinHeist and an un-named excel template. 40lbs may have been an understatement. Some of these chips were actually burned on site, and I have no idea what they are. I might need to hire someone to help me.

(this has nothing to do with Ukraine, btw)