How to Organize your Gear!

If your like me, you have slowly begun collecting an ungodly amount of gear. Even though the great outdoors is an awesome *free* adventure, you need a lot of gear. Something I feel like I’m good at is organzing. I actually find the act of decluttering or organzing a messy drawer fun. So here is my guide to how I organize my gear.

Let me start by saying, I’ve lived in tiny apartments for the last 6 years or so of my life, so I’ve begun using my gear organziation as my decor. So all my gear is easily accessilble but also visible. Many people enter my apartment and say, “Your apartment looks like an REI store.” Which is true but we use *most* of the gear at some point during the year.

So here we go. The major focal point of my gear organzation is our “Gear Closet”. I purchased these from IKEA a few years ago, I honestly don’t remeber the model but it was one fo the closet sets. We used the hanging bar and added shower curtin rings to hang out backpacks. We added a pants rack on the right side, which we orginally used to store our snowboards but later it turned into a hanging rack for rock climbing gear. We lined the bottom of the section with some artifical turf to protect the bottom. Now we have our hiking shoes and hockey skates there. Then we sorted our gear into categories:

• Surfing: Booties, Gloves, Fins
• Cooking: Stoves, pots, pans, food storage
• Moutain Bike Gear: Pads, Gloves, repair kits
• Snow Gear: Spiltboard Skins, Crambons,
• Other/Large Gear: Dry Bags, Backpacking Packs, Snowshoes, Sleeping Bags
• Small Gear: Spilt into a few sections
  • Emergency Bin: Avy Beacons, First Aid Kits, Space Blankets
  • Other Gear Bin: Pocket Knifes, Headlamps, Gear Repair Kits, Whistles
  • Maps Bin
  • Googles Bin
• Climbing Gear: Harness, Ropes, Belay Devices, etc.

Next, is our second bedroom, this has been a huge addition in our apartment. This space is currently used as our guest room, workout space & gear storage. Lets start with the gear. We bought these bike hooks from Amazon to hang our mountain bikes on the wall. Then I hung some Garage Hooks (similar to these) to hang our wakeboards. Then next to the futon is our Board Rack. I built this for my husband (then bofriend) for Christmas a few years back with a few 2x4s, a piece of plywood, and some wood dowls. To accessorize it, I added that artifical turf from above to the bottom and then added pipe insulation to the dowls to protect the baords. Lastly, I added some coat hooks to the rack so he could hang his wet suits. We now have an extra closet in our house that houses all our wetsuits but it was great in our last apartment when space was tight.

The otherside of this room, is our workout space. Although it may not classify as “gear” I decided to include it since I’ve basically create my own home gym on a budget during COVID. I’ll add some of my favorite gear to this list as well incase your interested.

So like anyone who works out from home, you often have dumbbells, so I found THIS dumbbell rack on Amazon which is great for holding all my dumbbells. Next, you likely haves some yoga mats and maybe a jump rope or bands so THIS yoga mat rack is perfect. I ultimately ended up using wall hooks to hang my jump ropes and bands but my booty bands hang on this rack. I hung my Bose Ball on this hook which can also be used to hold a bike horiztonally. Then I have a wire basket (simialr to this) in the corner to hold my foam rollers, surf balance board and other random odds and ends. Then next to it is the cube shelves you can purchase almsot anywhere (target, walmart, home depot, etc.) with some baskets for other things. We have a surfboard on the wall because it’s too tall for our ceilings so we used these hooks to hang it on the wall. Lastly, we have our hung TV on the wall to watch from the futon for guests or to have things going while working out! We used this wall mount which I highly recommend and this TV is in our other room, the one here is our old one.

Some other things we love in our home gym that isn’t really an organziational pieces are these:

• NordicTrack Bike: We like all the different rides we can go on!
• FlyBird Bench: perfect for inhancing all our workouts and fold ups for storage!
• FlyBird Pull Up Bar: we have it in our closet!
• Amazon Dumbbells: we’ve got ours from everywhere but Amazon is really affordable imo.
• Tone Fitness Aerobic Step Platform
• Exercise Ball

Thanks for reading through how I organize all my gear! These storage things are just how we store our gear. Our clothes & shoes are stored in closets or baskets in other places of the house. I hope this helps and please reach out with any questions you have!