With many of us busy setting New Year’s Resolutions and planning for 2023, tidying the tack room is a straightforward job that can make an enormous difference to your year of equestrian endeavours. Here we give you our top tips for making the process as effective (and painless) as possible!
1. Declutter
A clutter-free tack room makes for a clutter-free mind, and yet many of us are guilty of ignoring just how busy and chaotic our equestrian spaces have become. Weeding out those pieces of equipment you’ve collected over the years but never use is the first step towards revitalising your space. Of course, there will be plenty that is worth keeping, so sort your items into ‘get rid’ and ‘keep’ piles, before organising the items you are keeping into crates and trunks.
TOP TIP
The trick is not to hold on to the ‘get rid’ pile for any longer than is necessary. Take your items to a second-hand shop, advertise them on Facebook Marketplace or donate anything you can to a local equine charity. Essentially, just get rid of it by whatever means necessary!
2. Clean it
As soon as you’ve done your declutter, it’s time for a deep clean. Dust the shelves, scrub any storage units or materials and give the floor a good sweep. Then, not only do you want a clean area, but you also want clean items, so get out the individual items and clean them as necessary. Make sure that any rugs that need washing are dealt with and that your old bridle is soaped and ready for storage.
3. Create a seasonal organising system
When putting your items away, take a moment to place everything into set places for the seasons. For example, as it is currently summer, you could put rugs at the bottom of the piles and pack fly sheets at the top. This is something you should try to do with every change of season so that the items you’ll need are close at hand while everything else is prepped and neatly stored, ready for use later on.
4. Labelling
Packing things away and out of sight makes the place look tidier and keeps items covered and clean. Unfortunately, this also makes them difficult to find, but this can easily be overcome by adding labels to all relevant shelves, boxes and trunks. You are likely to end up with a ‘miscellaneous’ box or two, but at least the vast majority of items will be organised.
5. Get matchy-matchy
If you’re starting to get into the swing of reorganising, you could go one step further and make your storage shelves as aesthetically pleasing as they are functional by organising them according to colour. Make a rainbow of numnahs or set a colour theme for your storage solutions! Buy buckets, halters and rugs that are the same colour, and you’ll be surprised at how neat and organised everything will look!
6. Finishing touches
By this point, your tack room will be looking shipshape, but if you’ve caught the organising bug, you could go further still… For example, the tack or feed room could be the perfect place for a yard whiteboard for recording emergency numbers or perhaps medication or feed regimes. Alternatively, you could sort out supplements into Tupperware containers with appropriate scoops to make it easy for your stable manager to administer them. In essence, there are lots of final ‘geeky’ steps you can take to make your tack room a super organised and productive space – use your imagination, and see what you can do!
NOTE:
If you’ve done with the tack room and feel compelled to organise further, we can recommend sorting out your car…We were astonished to find the items that have been ‘living’ in our car and have now returned them to labelled(!) boxes in the tack room. The boot space we’ve created is remarkable and it’s possible that in 2023 we could take passengers without having to apologise for the stable yard in the back seat…[end box]
Keeping it clean
Now that your tack room looks smart and tidy, it’s time to give yourself a big pat on the back, but your work isn’t over. It’s important to remember to dust and sweep up regularly, as well as put each item back where it belongs after use, so everything doesn’t descend into chaos again.
If you keep this up, your equestrian life will become much more simple, efficient and ordered, and all those wasted hours hunting for that ‘essential item you put somewhere, some time ago’ will be a thing of the past.