Lol, many of us have faced this exact issue at one time or another!
It's either the storage space or the way we store stuff.
I never bother with spreadsheets btw, to me this is only an extra unnecessary step.
Short story: Split up your collection and store similar things together in a labeled box. And store the labeled box on some spot that is logical to you.
But I've had several problems while my collection was getting bigger.
First of all I had to find an efficient way to store stuff and the best way to go is up! 😁
I ended up using only 1 type of cardboard box which could be opened from the top and kinda clicked onto each other so I can lift an entire stack without the boxes starting to slide. And these boxes are very sturdy and have no taped shut opening in the bottom, so no potential hazards there.
I ended up setting up these metal storage thingies with a couple shelves which are quite cheap and sturdy. As a bonus the shelves themselves were held into some metal L-shaped bar with the wooden shelf laying inside it, but as this L-shaped metal thing is very wide, it's also easy to put a sticker onto it so I can find my stuff faster.
And yet another problem I faced with an expanding collection was this:
At some point I had enough of any particular type of hardware so it would make sense to store these all together and labeled the box accordingly. But as new stuff kept coming in, the boxes became full and I had to use a second box, splitting up the contents of the single box. This was especially the case with graphics cards, which I split up according to it's connector (ISA, PCI, AGP, etc) or separate if I had many of them (for example Virges and all of those Geforce MX cards).
In the end I went with splitting AGP cards roughly according to their performance and not for example their generation (so no FX 5200 in the same box as an FX 5900 and the GF 6600 in another box) and I just labeled the boxes like "AGP 1" (fastest), "AGP 2" (bit slower) all the way to "AGP 5" or so (slowest, but still of some use) and all the really crappy AGP cards I put in another separate box labeled "AGP crappy" and hid that way behind all the more useful stuff. On the same ID-sticker "AGP 2" I'll write down 1 or 2 cards that are roughly designated for that box (like GF4, so I'll know this box has graphics cards with similar specs to a GF4) and it's much faster this way.
So sometimes I'll have to rearrange stuff, but this is fairly easy as it's pretty straight forward and quick.
I also label each card individually, but only if it was tested or not (usually on a little piece of "masking tape" as stickers have the tendency to let go after a while). A curly mark means it did display an image, x-mark that it failed to display an image when last tested, the name of the computer I removed it from (so I'll remember that it worked perfectly in a working rig, including heavy usage) and sometimes also how I got it and when.
This way I don't need to keep records as these always tend to get lost after a while, leaving me with a big stack of potential problems 😜
Motherboards I store and sort by their CPU sockets and AT or ATX, stack of 486 boards start at the right and at the left are the most modern boards. Again, the shelves the stacks are stored on are labeled by their CPU socket and the motherboard boxes are mostly labeled. Inside I keep sheets of paper with things about the motherboards I noticed, like when I got it and in what condition if applicable, but also if I ever tested or used it and if not, if I ever noticed something damaged like a broken trace or burn marks.
So basically I store similar things together and all the records are kept close to the actual piece of hardware itself.
