I lose everything but hammers. I keep a lot of hammers around so if I can't find the one I want, I can usually get one that will do WHAT I want.
Hammers are great for auto or any repair job. I recommend you get several and use them whenever WD40 and swear words fail.
Seriously, if you're losing sockets, its because you don't put them away. I'm lazy too, but I drink lots of bottled water. Thats the lazy man's #1 secret to keeping their tools on hand. Cut out the bottom of 1 gallon jugs and use them as temporary storage when working on long (or several) projects. keep your screws, nuts and bolts, washers and even some small parts in one. keep your smaller wrenches, the sockets you need, etc in another. That way, you're lugging around a pair of light, small toolboxes instead of walking to and from your workstation when you need to grab that 13 MM deepwell you used an hour ago and thought you were done with.
Clean everything off when the project ends, and the project isn't over until you've cleaned up
Thats secret#2 for the lazy wrenchjockey. If you can train your brain to think "I'm not done yet" even though the fixing part is, you'll get everything put up and cleaned up before it walks away to hide under the rag bin.
my personal tics:
1: I hate the new socket holders. these little plastic things that stick out the end to hold them up. They wear out and start popping sockets loose. the metal ones are almost as bad; they just take longer to break down and lose their spring. Get the old type that looks like an elongated metal bucket with a handle that covers the sockets. They don't fall out of those unless you're really trying hard to make them.
2: 2 toolboxes are best if you work on several cars 9or the occasional lownmower, weedwaker, chainsaw, etc). Keep one fore metric and one for American. Put your "regulars" in these boxes if nothing else.
3: screwdrivers, hammers(
), saws, drills and some wrench sets make a nice wall decoration, and plain sight makes things easier to spot.
4: When I finally got my hands on a standup box (utility cabinet, whatever they're called they're HUGE), it was quite a treat. I keep specialty tools, deepwells, and extra sets in there. I don't use it as often as I'd expected when I got it, but its big enough that overfilling isn't much of an issue and overfilling it seems, at this time, a silly concern. If you don't have one, get one.
5: i live on farmland, so theres lots of space. that makes the addition of a steel toolshed a few years ago an easy decision. your workspace is important when deciding the tools you'll have. Whenn I lived in town, i only had my 1gallon jugs and those 2 old fashioned toolboxes (and I mean OLD; one was my grandfathers
) to work with. More space=more tools.