I find it annoying having to look at every heated ingot in my forge to find the ones i need, and storage of ores and ingots is a issue for me. Unpacking crates is tedious, so i tend to have a lot of loose entities around my shop, and this causes myself many issues. I really like the packages things come in when you order them, i think it would be cool to have a packaging station or just some movable baskets or something like you can move all the other things (furnace, forge, anvil, etc). The packaging station could require a piece of firewood or maybe a log or something, and turn whatever is on it's work surface into one of the magical delivery crates that are so easy to unpack right where you need them. More options for storage is something i would love to see on this fantastic game. Thanks for all of your hard work.
With the forge, I suggest that you put your ingots into sections, putting on only the metals that are requested the most, and leaving a space for any other ingots in case a customer requests an ingot that's not already on the forge. I would suggest that you put a maximum of 5 ingots in each group, since that is the highest amount of ingots that you can use on one item (this is the shield, with 2 ingots for the frame, one for the boss, and 1 ingot for each of the 2 handles, which makes 5 ingots total).
If by 'crates', you mean the ones that you can open and close, just hold alt and spin it upside down. Then set it down upside down, and click to open it. Then you can just lift the crate and everything should be in a nice little pile.