Pedal Storage - Another Kind of Pedal Tetris

I’ve had a few readers ask me how I go about storing my now 900+ pedals. Where I actually discovered a solution some time ago that really suits my own situation.

In effect these are 2 different types of strong hard plastic (polypropolene) drawer stackable storage towers- as below - do note though that not all these units are created equal - and Amazon have occasionally sent me a lesser flimsier type which I had to return immediately - you need a certain thickness and durability of plastic to sit under these pedals - which can be really quite heavy.

Large Drawer Tower : EHC Large Frosted 4 Drawer Tower Plastic Storage Unit, Silver - c£36 for 4 drawer unit

Small Drawer Tower : Iris Ohyama Slim Frosted 5 Drawer Tower Plastic Storage Unit, NSC-205 - c£50 for 5 drawer unit.

Note that you can split apart and extend the segments - where I so far have all my Smaller Units as they come - at 5-tall, while my larger drawer units are stacked up as high as 7-tall. It really depends on the space you’re trying to fit them in. I’m mostly deploying the slimmer smaller ones now - as those are the ones that fit the remaining nooks and crannies!

I discovered fairly early on that with the larger drawer units I could fit up to 13 compact pedals to a layer, obviously many more minis, and far fewer large format pedals. You get the hang of this pedal Tetris pretty quickly and figure out what footprints each layout can accommodate. The orientation of pedals is entirely down to what fits where - sometimes you need to stagger or alternate the orientation of each pedal i.e. footswitch top and then bottom.

I tend to group mostly by brand, but also by genre to a degree - whatever makes sense. I was a DJ for over 20 years, so I’m well used to smart categorisation for what best fits where.

So each drawer unit typically has two layers of pedals stacked on top of each other - with 3mm foam board in-between (cut down to size). For some drawers though there is a further 3rd layer - with pedals turned upside down and interlaced with the 2nd layer - meaning that some drawers contain more than 26 pedals, in fact the most populous drawers house a few more than 30 compact units.

I frequently inventory and re-arrange the contents of each drawer- and try to keep a record of which pedals each drawer contains - with a written transparent post-it note attached to the front of most drawers now.

I re-circulate so many pedals on the board at regular intervals - meaning it’s very necessary for me to know what is stored where. I frequently get inquiries about older pedals - and need to ’dig’ those out to refresh my memory of them and compare them with newer arrivals. When I’m doing my massive genre overviews things always get complicated.

These units are pretty robust - but you can still break the silver frame of the larger unit fairly easily if you’re not careful. So far though this solution has served me really well for all these years - and there is no sign of sag or wear.

Because of the nature that the lower layers are somewhat concealed - it is definitely important to document what sits where as you go - particularly with storage units that are somewhat burrowed into their surroundings.

I’m currently in a place where these are almost like those archive units where you need to move one row out of the way (or two) to access the particular stack you need.

I sort of have space for one or two more slim units - and then I’m going to start stacking further layers on top of each of those - probably another 2 levels!

Anyway - I sincerely hope some of you found this useful! Storage is always not just about housing the pedals - but how easy those units are to accommodate into those surroundings.