When I was younger, I would hold terminal strips (hey, this was before PCBs) in pliers, heat them up and then fling or whip them toward a piece of safety glass from an old TV. Then I'd use long-nose pliers and dikes (diagonal side cutters) to unwrap component leads from the terminals. I'd save the solder splashes and melt them down for use as "lead" weights and other such things.
With PCBs and thru-hole components, I primarily use a solder sucker bulb (faster than a plunger solder sucker, less expensive than a vacuum-powered desoldering station) and desolder a bord that way.
Present common sense, especially with large boards chock full of ICs is to leave the components there, give the board a number or cute name, inventory the ICs on the board into a word processor with the board number attached and alphabetize. No sorting to worry about, you've not spent time desoldering an IC that you'll never use and the board stores about as handily as any other system. A lot less work.
Here's a write-up I did concerning harvesting SMT components:
A heat gun is one of the fastest methods of harvesting SMT components without causing damage. First, remove delicate thru-hole components that you wish to save using your normal thru-hole desoldering techniques. Then connect a ground clip to an obvious grounding point on the board and install an electrostatic discharge (ESD) wrist strap on yourself. Use a small heat gun such as the Ungar 6966C with an accessory tip that directs airflow to a very small point. Preheat a large area of the board without the accessory tip in place, then install the tip and begin removing components. Rather than directing the hot air directly at a component, direct it onto the PCB around the base of the part. Air flowing along the surface of the board will melt solder over a large area. Remove diodes, transistors and ICs in that order as you come to them in an area. Then remove the electrolytic capacitors, inductors, resistors and finally the ceramic capacitors in that order as you come to them. If you hold the gun at a 45º angle with respect to the board and start at one edge, work your way across the board in the direction of the heat flow. That way, future areas of the board will be preheated. Pluck the devices from the board with tweezers. Larger ICs can be placed on a wet sponge in a grounded tray to cool them down and to protect them from ESD.
Keeping ESD from SMT
While harvesting electrostatic-sensitive surface-mount devices from a board, the question always came up about what to do with the hot chips so that they're protected from electrostatic discharge (ESD). I've come up with two good ways to handle the problem.
One method is to lay out a flat sheet of galvanized sheet metal to which you've soldered a wire which is connected to earth ground along with your soldering iron, your grounding wrist strap, the circuit board from which you're harvesting and a pair of fine-tipped tweezers. You can get a new piece of scrap from nearly any heating/air conditioning shop around town. Make sure the metal is free from oil by rinsing with alcohol. Use a hot-air gun to melt the component from the board and then pluck the item from the board with the tweezers and deposit on the sheet metal to cool. If you'd like the device to cool down more rapidly than is obtainable by placing it on the sheet metal, place a wet cellulose sponge on the sheet metal and place the newly-desoldered components on that. Using a metal/sponge landing pad with a large surface helps you to organize your desoldered components a little better for later sorting.
Dean