It's funny this came up. I ended up writing a small webapp that runs locally and allows me to catalog my tools, parts and other important odds and ends in a SQLite database (and attach datasheets and other information I've picked up along the way). I'm almost certainly the opposite of a minimalist, but going through and actually documenting what I have, where I put it, and sometimes what it was intended for, has been incredibly useful, especially being able to use full text search to quickly look up things.