Over time, one’s bank can become cluttered and disorganized. This can not only make items in one’s bank difficult to find, but an organized bank can help you become more efficient at finding things you need, as well as getting in and out of your bank as quick as possible when prepping or grinding out skills. If you can’t locate where in your bank an item is fairly quickly, or you find yourself using the search function on a regular basis, then you should seriously consider taking some time to organize your bank.
Here is an example of part of someone’s bank that I will use as an example:

Many bank pictures I see posted across the web are similar to this one in that a large amount of unrelated items are thrown in to one tab, making them difficult to relocate as there is no pattern and things are constantly moved as more and more items are taken out and put back in.

Let’s look at some ways that you can organize your bank so that you can spend less time in it, and more time doing other activities. There are two main tools I use to keep my bank organized and efficient. Those are “bank spacers” and categorization. I will post some of the tabs in my bank below the text of the article and make references to them throughout the rest of the article.

You may have heard of bank spacers by any number of things, but essentially they are stacks of any particular item you keep in your bank at all times for organizational purposes. They are very useful for items that are commonly put in or taken out of your bank. Take a look at my potions, runes/teleports, Herblore Habitat/farming, or general skilling tabs. No matter what dosage of potion or charge of ring/necklace/amulet I dump in to my bank, they always end up in the same place. This freely allows me to use the “bank all” option without having to then go in and move things around after doing so. Similarly, each and every time I want to take out most any item in any of these tabs, I know exactly where to go without having to think about it. Once you setup all your bank spacers and begin to memorize their layout, you don’t need to spend much time thinking about where in the bank they are, because they always are in the same spot.

Categorization within your bank can help in two different ways, the first of those branches is with bank spacers. The more precise you categorize the items in your bank, the quicker you will be able to find those items. Now, that doesn’t just necessarily mean assigning a general category, but putting related items close to each other within those tabs. This is most evident in my farming and general skilling tabs. In the farming tab, all seeds are located right next to their related produce, sapling, or payment. In the general skilling tab, each skill or closely coupled groups of skills have their own designated area within the tab. The patterns in both of these tabs are very straightforward and simplistic, making it easy to take out groups of items for my farm runs or any other skilling activity. Organization within tabs is also helpful for bank skills, where you are often taking out raw materials and putting them back in a more processed form. The best example I have for this is my potions tab for when I want to make overloads. I have it set up so that the five types of 3 dose extremes are lined up vertically, and my stack of torstols would be moved to that same vertical line when I wanted to make some. This allows me to remove 5 of one type of extreme from the bank, leaving my mouse on the extreme below it. So with several quick movements I can go down that vertical line removing 5 of each extreme without wasted effort. This can be applied to almost any bank skill so you can waste less time banking and more time getting xp.

Now these examples I have shown are just the ways I choose to organize my bank and they aren’t the correct or only ways to do it. Here are a few steps and tricks to think about when organizing your bank. First start to think about what you want to put in each tab. It can be specific as dedicating an entire tab to potions, or as general as just skilling. Once you have decided what you want to go in each tab, the next step is deciding how the tab itself will be organized. Some of the ways I do this are counting the number of items I have that are related together, so that I can group them together in a tab in a specific pattern. Also note that your bank has 10 columns in it, as this is an important factor to setting up those patterns. For example, in my general skilling tab I have fifteen items related to summoning. One way to organize them all would be to take up an entire row of ten, then another half row of five. Instead I used half of three rows, which complements my woodcutting, construction, and firemaking setups, as each of those three have five parts to their category. For another example of this, take a look at my tab or runes and teleports. The last tip I’ll give for the actual process of setting up and organizing your bank is to make sure and make use of the two bank modes that you can toggle between using the button left of the search button. The first mode, swap mode, illustrated by two items being switched, directly swaps two items without moving any other items around. The second mode, insert mode, illustrated by one item being moved in front of another two, allows you to drag an item on to another. This places the item you were dragging in front of the item it was dragged on to, and then moves the rest of the items behind that spot back. Knowing how to use each of these modes will make setting up your bank’s organization much easier.

I hope you find this article helpful for reasons and ways to setup and organize your bank. Feel free to post any questions you have about my organizational choices or how you should organize any specific part of your bank. Good luck!