This article was produced in partnership with Gladiator
The inevitable truth of having an active life where you and your family enjoy sports and the outdoors, and one where you engage in lots of DIY hobbies like woodworking and crafts, is that you will accumulate a lot of stuff. There’s no way to avoid the accumulation of gear needed to participate in the outdoor activities you gravitate toward—cycling, fishing, skiing/snowboarding, surfing, backpacking, basketball, tennis…the list goes on.
And forget about trying to successfully gather and organize everything you need to work on a classic car or motorcycle, or craft a live-edge coffee table. It’s not going to happen without some kind of storage system, like the premium, durable, good-looking solutions from Gladiator.
To get started though, you need to analyze your garage or storage area, says Blake Bancroft, Gladiator brand and e-commerce manager at Whirlpool Corporation. “Consider overall space, wall space, and accessibility,” he says. “It’s about maximizing the space you already have.”
Bringing items off the floor with shelving and overhead storage is an easy way to get started. Then, think about how you can utilize your wall space more efficiently by putting up a wall organization system. Finally, he says, consider accessibility: What items do you need to have access to every day versus infrequently used stuff? After you address those key factors, it’s easy to dial in a solution that works for you.
Organize Your Sporting Life
Having a cluttered, jumbled pile of sports and outdoor gear in the garage, all hanging haphazardly on hooks and nails in the drywall, balanced precariously on mismatched shelving, or just unceremoniously dumped on the ground is not only a pain to navigate when it’s time to get out and have fun, it looks bad.
“Adding rack shelving is a common starting point for many people,” says Bancroft. “It gets items off the ground and you can typically store lots of variations of gear.” Thankfully, Gladiator has multiple options and tips to turn that mountain of mess into an organized, clean, and streamlined assortment of essential gear.