Inventory tracking ideas
I had exactly the same problem. In the end I gave in to my warehousing instinct and assigned each physical drawer, box, etc a location code. For example, I have ten of those 20-compartment boxes, so they are referenced as 1.1, 10.6 (e.g. box 10, compartment 6). Then everything went into a spreadsheet with tabs for different categories (capacitors, LEDs, relays etc). 

Each item has a column with part number, type, value, max voltage, RoHS, quantity in stock, min quantity for reorder, etc., plus preferred supplier part number etc. 
Then I can just use 'find' on the spreadsheet to look something up, or run a simple procedure to check for things to reorder. 

The only thing that isn't given a location is resistors, but each value is in a separate zip-lock bag, in numerical order over three shoe boxes. 

One day I will port the lot in Access, but couldn't be bothered at this stage. :)