With hundreds of different blocks, there are plenty of building materials in Minecraft. However, the inventory has seen little development over the years. This can make it particularly challenging during long building projects, cave tours, or exploration trips to bring everything back home. Fortunately, you don’t have to rely solely on the available inventory slots, as there are other ways to expand your space and make the best of the limitations! We will explore some tips for keeping your inventory organised, including the new bundles, which are extremely handy.
Efficient Inventory Organisation for More Space
The standard inventory might seem quite spacious at first, but you’ll quickly find that the four rows with nine slots each are not always sufficient. It’s important to manage this space wisely and establish a system to always have all the important items and tools with you. Decide from the beginning where exactly the most important items in your inventory belong and avoid mixing them up.
The Hotbar is for all your tools that you always need to have on hand. Most players use it for their weapons and tools, food, a water bucket, torches, and possibly rockets for the Elytra. How you arrange these items is up to you. Don’t forget, you don’t always have to scroll! To be quicker, you can use the numbers 1 to 9 on your keyboard.
You can also use your off-hand for various things. Many players opt for a shield for defence or a Totem of Undying. Torches are always useful for cave tours, especially when combined with mods like “Dynamic Lighting”.
In the rest of your inventory, make sure to stock up on the following items:
- Wooden planks
- Possible arrows
- Iron (as long as you don’t have diamond tools)
- Coal
- Compass and map (for explorations)
- Crafting table
Ender Chest: Essential Inventory Upgrade
Once you’ve been to the Nether, gathered some blaze powder, and fought Endermen, you can craft an Ender Chest. We highly recommend doing so, as this chest is extremely useful for your gameplay.
In terms of storage space, it only provides three more rows (like a single chest), but the Ender Chest functions differently. Essentially, it’s a cross-dimensional inventory that you can access anytime and anywhere. Even if you don’t have an Ender Chest at hand, the content remains saved in your world. You can craft a new chest using an Ender Eye and eight obsidian, and all items will still be available. To avoid losing it, always have a pickaxe with “Silk Touch” with you.
Most players use the Ender Chest as a safe place for valuable items, such as found diamonds. It’s also extremely handy as a backup if you die and lose all your gear. If the space in the Ender Chest isn’t sufficient, you can perfectly link it with the following item!
Shulker Box: Flexible Inventory Management
After successfully defeating the Ender Dragon (Ender Dragon in Minecraft: Ultimate Guide to Victory) , you can travel to the outer End islands. There, you’ll find End Cities, large structures made of purpur blocks and end stone bricks, offering rare loot.
These structures are protected by Shulkers, which drop shulker shells upon death. Two of these, plus a chest, can be crafted into a Shulker Box. For many advanced Minecraft players, these portable boxes are indispensable and should also help keep your inventory organised.
Shulker Boxes have only 27 slots, but unlike the Ender Chest, each has its own inventory. You can fill them like regular chests, then break them and take them with you. To avoid confusion later, we recommend dyeing or renaming them at an anvil. You can use Shulker Boxes for virtually anything you can think of. Specialised boxes are best for cave tours, redstone items, or exploration tours.
A limitation of Shulker Boxes is that you can’t stack them inside one another. That would be too good to be true! Nevertheless, they provide much more space and can be perfectly stored in Ender Chests or your inventory. Our next item can be stored in Shulker Boxes, providing a new way to organise your inventory.
Bundles: Handy Tool for Beginners
Bundles were announced many years ago but were only recently officially added to the game. They are particularly handy for your beginnings in Minecraft and serve as a wonderful transition between your normal inventory and endgame solutions like Shulker Boxes.
You can craft a bundle early on using a piece of leather and string, and you can also dye and rename it. The capacity is only 64 blocks, but it can be divided into 64 items. For example, you can store 32 cobblestones, 16 flowers, and 16 coal in it — all of which takes up only one slot with the bundle. For items that stack only up to 16 or just one piece, the bundle fills up faster. This applies to signs, eggs, ender pearls, or tools. And, of course, you can’t store Shulker Boxes in a bundle — but the other way around!
You can move items into the bundle with a right-click. The last 12 items you store in it will be displayed in a small menu, through which you can scroll with your mouse wheel to retrieve specific items. The bar shows how full the bundle is.
Bundles are particularly useful for storing miscellaneous items in your inventory and can save a lot of space. You can take multiple bundles with you! They are great for flowers and other natural items, but also for a collection of all workstations, mob drops, or your fishing catches. If you play as a nomad, without a permanent base, bundles are also super practical!
Efficient Minecraft Inventory: Final Thoughts
Even if the inventory in Minecraft seems small at first, you can do a lot with it. With items like Ender Chests, Shulker Boxes, or the new bundles, you will always have all your items under control. Rent your own Minecraft server with us and play together with your friends. This way, you can share your inventories and have significantly more space for your adventures!
