Storing Gear in Your Small NYC Apartment
Living in NYC and loving the outdoors can be a challenge at times. One of the biggest problems is finding a place to store your gear, especially if you live in a small apartment. The basement of your building is probably moldy, you definitely can’t fit anything else in the back of your closet, and who wants to waste time going to a storage unit when you could be in the great outdoors?
We want to help you make it all just a little bit easier, so we've collected tips from the community (thanks to all who contributed!) to create the best tips for storing your gear.
Small Gear
Smaller gear can be a pain to store if you don’t keep track of it. You’ll end up finding energy bars and rolls of duct tape under your bed for the next year if you don’t have a designated place to store them after a trip. A quick fix for this is an over the door shoe hanger. The pockets can be used for small accessories like hats and gloves, a headlamp, first aid supplies, and your patch kit. Another idea is to hang things like carabiners and binoculars on your wall to make cool art in your living room.
Medium Gear
For medium sized gear, storage bins are going to be your best friend. You can get flat bins to throw under your couch, square bins to stack in a closet, or fancy bins with patterns to put in the corner of your living room. If you have a bed with space underneath it, that’s also a great area to take advantage of when it comes to using storage bins. For ropes and harnesses, metal storage racks work great. They’re not the prettiest looking things in the world, but you can set one up in the corner of your living room to stack everything on for easy access.
Large Gear
When it comes to larger sized gear, making it the centerpiece of your apartment is the best way to go. There’s nothing wrong with hanging your surfboard above your bed, ski’s above the couch, or rigging your kayak or bike to lean in the corner of the living room (You can find a good product to do so here.) Not only is it convenient for you to grab your equipment and go, your apartment also ends up looking like something out of a Wes Anderson movie.
Keeping your equipment in order doesn’t have to be a difficult task. Making it part of your home decor is just one way to get creative when making space. With these storage tips, long gone are the days of gear sprawled everywhere around your apartment. More tips to add? Join the conversation here.
Words by Katie Machia. Photos by Natasha Shapiro
