I just got back from my Sunday Hobby Shop hunt and picked up a tote for my extra parts.
Sorted all the parts according to the kit in 1 gallon Ziplock bags.
Might have to get a second tote since I ran out of space rather quickly. 
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Careful. Before you know it, youāll be storing your totes in totes and so on! 
āmike
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- I build my first Panther. After that all left over Panther parts go into that box.
- I build my first Tiger. Aftet that . . .
- I build my first Steyr. After that . . .
I think i am now up to 5 CCKW and 3 Blitz spare parts boxes.
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I sort mine by weapons, radios, duffles, fuel cans etc. Left over trees get put into a separate box together with other parts trees and the original box gets tossed, I donāt save the box art but do hang on to the assembly directions for some reason.
Cajun 
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I have two M60s and three, maybe four M-113s worth of parts.
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I can never store left over parts any longer, just on their own. What I have done over the years is take what extra parts that could be useful on the same vehicle but perhaps building a different version of that vehicle, I simply put the extras in another kit of that vehicle. Another words, extra parts of, letās say, a broken or abandoned Testors M47, is good enough to be use on another M47, well, those parts go the another M47 kit. Iāve got 3 M47 kits stuffed with extra sprues from other M47ās that were tossed, or otherwise abandoned by other means. Of those 3 kits, I probably have enough parts to build 5 M47s. I do this with Dragon Shermans, et al.
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All the spare parts go directly into the trash when the kit is completed with a few exceptions.
Pz III, Pz IV, Panther, Tiger & T34, spare parts go in specally marked boxes for each vehicle type.
In the 1990ās, I never used spares from any other kits than the ones mentioned. Decided to stop wasting space keeping clutter I wouldnāt use. Threw several boxes of spare parts in the trash. In over 25 years, have never wanted or needed anything that was throw out.
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I do similar. Anything I deem useful like fuel cans, weapons, bombs, tools etc. Iāll keep. Also anything unique that would be hard to scratch like main guns, turrets (yes one kit I built had two turrets), tracks, etc get kept. Anything super generic or easy to scratch gets tossed.
Like you I store spare parts on a piece of the tree in a large ziplock bag, with a note in the bag about the type of kit it went with. These then go in a cardboard box
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I place them in a Ziplock bag along with the model information and store them in my closet with the model collection. Over the years I have been able to provide parts to other modelers. I keep the instructions and spare/leftover decals for the same reason.
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I actually cut, tape and staple the matching boxes together so i have one mega CCKW box that is actually three boxes tall.
As I build a new kit I only remove parts from the sprues as i use them but i then disgard the now empty sprues as quickly as possible to reduce tthe mass and the search time while working on the new kit. (I do keep the sprue ID number/letter attached until the very end.) At the end of this process there is much less volume of left over parts and sprues to move into the spares boxes.
Current stock of mega parts boxes:
- CCKW x 3 (Italeri, Tamiya & HobbyBoss)
- Horch x2
- Steyr x2
- Dragon Wagon x2
etc. etc. etc.
I will sometimes also put entire bagged kits in the spares box for future use. (I use so many italeri water truck cabs for other projects i try to keep at least one full kit in stock.)
p.s. If any one needs a missing or broken part in one of these catagories just ask. Iām game and just might have what you need. FREE!
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I rarely throw anything away unless the part was incorrect from the start (old 2 bar handle gas cans.)
Parts can often be repurposed for other things. (A pair of Panther road wheels became a working fifth wheel under a freelanced German farm wagon, Itself a conversion of a Opel Blitz load body.
Two Panther road wheels hiding in under there as a working fifth wheel for the farm wagon. (Built WAY before Das Werk ever came out with their version.)
Not much to it,no organization,just toss them in a box.Its mostly leftover decals,aircraft weapons,tools,kit tracks not used,accessories,and assorted sprues.
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I do like @Mead93 does. Only keep the tools, ordnance, decals, etc that I would potentially use on another kit. Other extra random parts get tossed.
The part also gets clipped off the sprue if large, or the sprue pared down significantly if itās small. I donāt bother labeling since Iāve finished a max of 8-10 kits in my life and remember all of them.
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I buy peanuts in the big square plastic jars with the wide mouth -
After Iāve had the pleasure of eating the peanuts, I run the jar through the dishwasher to remove the peanut oil. When Iām done with a kit, I cut all the leftover pieces from the sprues and toss them in the appropriate jar. This saves a lot of space and Iāve got a stack of labeled jars in the closet. Sherman, Panther, Tiger get their own but I have generic US and German ones, too.
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Sorry, but that method is just nuts!
Iāll see myself out
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I keep a few kit boxes and place all the left-overs by type in them. For example, the Abrams box has Abrams parts, Bradley parts in a Bradley box, M48/M60 parts in an M48 box, etc., etcā¦
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Letās hope you look before absent-mindedly reaching for a snack!
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Thatās why I donāt keep brush cleaner in an old coffee cup anymore!
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How ever you do it, if you donāt label and sort the parts, then after a while youāre just making up more clutter than doing anything useful.
You can keep it all in your head in your early days of modeling but give the hobby a couple or three decades and youāll start forgetting and āmisrememberingā what you might have thatās useful while spending more time looking than building.
So, do yourself a favor and start right by clipping the parts off the sprue (to reduce the space needed), sorting them by type, vehicle type or nationality, and then labeling the storage containers so that you can actually find what you might need 15 years from now.
Now, having said all of that, I will now confess that I donāt save much of anything in the way of spare parts anymore except for figures and figure accessories and ācommonā vehicle components sorted by vehicle type, nationality and leftover decals. I donāt save any sprues anymore - period. I donāt save box art or instructions anymore, either. There was a time when I used to clip every single leftover part off the sprues, then clip out any and every long, straight piece of sprue, cut the box art off the lids and file away all the instructions.
Saving everything that could or might prove to be useful one day gradually got out of control, so now Iām very selective and much more deliberate in my approach.
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Yesā¦ Some of the replies strike a chord with me. My āspares boxā is actually about a dozen. One labelled PzIV, one Panther, one Sdkfz251, one labelled āDiorama bits, trees etcā, āFigure Partsā and so on. I confess I have rarely used any of this carefully stored rubbish, some of it dating back nearly 50 years, although I did use some spare Zimmeritted (is that a word?) parts from a DML PZIV based kit (I think it was the Jagdpanzer IV Lang) on the RFM Pz IV with interior, which didnāt have Zimmerit on it. Maybe I should have a bit of a clear outā¦ Sprues, hmmm, Iāve noticed if you are trying to use stretched sprue for e.g. aerials Tamiya is the best, none of the others really work so worth saving a bit of that.
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