How do you organize your gear?

Info on gear, conditioning, and preparation for hiking/climbing.
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JaredJohnson
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How do you organize your gear?

Post by JaredJohnson »

My gear has been a source of great pain for my poor wife. We organically wound up with some tubs and some sacks full of gear and clothing for camping, hiking, climbing, winter mountaineering, skiing, etc. etc. The majority of it and the most-frequently-used of it is mine, but we also have plenty of stuff for her and also a bunch of stuff for our many children. My wife built some shelves in the basement and we got lots of tubs of various sizes to try to organize it. Eventually she moved the shelves into a dedicated room. No matter how hard I try, the same things happen:

1. The "gear section" of our basement turns into just a large and spreading pile of stuff with tubs strewn about
2. My prep for any excursion becomes "spend an hour or two through every single item in every single tub and pile, pulling out the stuff I/we need for this adventure"

Since there's so much stuff, if I'm preparing for something really interesting it usually winds up spreading into our living room, and then the stuff I didn't wind up needing and/or the stuff I returned with occupies the couch for like a month. I often create tubs for "just the stuff that we rarely need to get at", but then later we wind up having to go through it because we suspect something we actually need is in there, sometimes we're right and sometimes we're wrong, either way the result was just a lot of wasted time and space.

I'm sure this is a fully solve-able problem if I would just figure out my complexes and do it right. But I'm curious how others approach this and if anybody has come up with ingenious methods that could change my life forever (:
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Conor
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Re: How do you organize your gear?

Post by Conor »

time and money is how you solve this problem. I went with a peg board, but it ends up a mess, evidenced by the pile of gear below the peg board.
gear 1.jpg
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gear 2.jpg
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I would like to eventually build out some cabinets and custom drawers, then utilize kaizen foam so each thing has a place. It would also give me some counter space. I did something similar in my garage for my sockets and other misc tools. But, I have a full wood shop and can build drawers and cabinets with relative efficiency. it's just time and money.
gear 4.jpg
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Iguru
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Re: How do you organize your gear?

Post by Iguru »

Be a minimalist, then it is a non issue :idea:
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two lunches
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Re: How do you organize your gear?

Post by two lunches »

Conor wrote: Thu Jan 20, 2022 11:55 am
gear 1.jpg
conor do i spy an ansel adams triptych next to your gear there? O:)
“To walk in nature is to witness a thousand miracles.” – Mary Davis
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daway8
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Re: How do you organize your gear?

Post by daway8 »

Iguru wrote: Thu Jan 20, 2022 11:57 am Be a minimalist, then it is a non issue :idea:
Or be a bachelor and it's a non issue - my stuff's strewn all over the living room but there's no one around to complain...

Sorry, not very helpful - maybe try labels??
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Re: How do you organize your gear?

Post by angry »

Clutter gives me anxiety and I live in 500 sqft. I also went the peg board route and my packs/ropes also hang on the wall using the heavy duty command hooks.
Gear.jpg
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JaredJohnson
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Re: How do you organize your gear?

Post by JaredJohnson »

just the addition of pegboard alone to our current situation will probably be a huge improvement! gonna get some today.
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Conor
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Re: How do you organize your gear?

Post by Conor »

stephakett wrote: Thu Jan 20, 2022 12:06 pm
Conor wrote: Thu Jan 20, 2022 11:55 am
gear 1.jpg
conor do i spy an ansel adams triptych next to your gear there? O:)
Good eye. I worked for Chevron from 2005 to 2011 and after 5 years they told me, "good job! to show our appreciation go pick something out of this catalog." since I didn't want a coffee mug or some crappy $20 watch, and I was shooting (and home developing) a lot of medium format b&w at the time, I opted for the triptych.
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Re: How do you organize your gear?

Post by greenonion »

25269170-junk-yard 2.jpg
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TomPierce
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Re: How do you organize your gear?

Post by TomPierce »

-Peg board in garage for climbing hardware.
-Bigger garage hooks for ropes.
-Big tubs WITH LABELS in the basement for bulky stuff, e.g. "Winter Clothes." The labels are key, they need to be enforced. There's no rummaging in the Winter Clothes bin for a summer outing, etc.
-Small tubs for, well, small things. My "Vision" bin has headlamps, goggles, lenses, sunglasses, spare parts, etc. "Hands" has mittens, gloves, liners, etc. You get the idea.
-And the closet in a back bedroom in the basement is for hung clothing: shells, shirts, etc.

-Tom
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Re: How do you organize your gear?

Post by Jenna N S »

angry wrote: Thu Jan 20, 2022 12:17 pm Clutter gives me anxiety and I live in 500 sqft. I also went the peg board route and my packs/ropes also hang on the wall using the heavy duty command hooks.
Gear.jpg
As someone who hates clutter, this picture is so satisfying to look at. I need peg board in my life.
"They say that time is a great teacher but unfortunately it kills all its pupils. The mountains are also great teachers, and better still, they let the occasional star pupil live." Mark Lawrence King of Thorns
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Re: How do you organize your gear?

Post by SchralpTheGnar »

I adhere to natures law of entropy
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