10 tips for organising your tack

As is well known by friends and family, I have a major tendency to buy lots of things for my horses and for myself. Over-reach boots, bandages, lead ropes, rugs you name it! I'm sure everyone has at least once in their life gone to a tack shop to buy one thing and come out with lots more things than you intended 🙈 It's like you can't stop and it's even worse with online shopping where you see something pretty in the  catalog and you end up buying another pretty sparkly thing. And eventually, you run out of space even if you already have lots of shelves dedicated for all your stuff 🙄

So after having had a major spring clean/clearing up session, I have thought of some tips to organise your tack efficiently so that you don’t come to hunt for that thing that you had in your hand yesterday but can't find it when you need it! 

Tips for organising your tack:

1. Make sure to have a big enough grooming bag to hold all of your brushes, lotions and potions. I can recommend the Eskdron grooming kits, they are very very good but my favourite is this Kingsland grooming bag ⬇️ It's just that bit bigger and has a slightly better shape to it. I can always overfill an Eskadron bag with all my stuff but I've never managed yet it with this one!

2. If you have a tack locker or shelves that you have to share with others, buy lots of clear plastic boxes. You can stack the boxes on top of each other and so get more bang for your buck, but it also looks so much more tidy and organised than without!

On a side note - it also helps to put your sweets/cookies/polos/sugar lumps into small plastic boxes so that they don't attract mice or other little creatures.

3. Tie all the bridles in the same way - one of my pet peeves is when someone doesn't clean their bridles or then hangs it up in a totally different way than anyone else. All of ours are done into a figure of 8 style for an organised look which makes the space you have seem more spacious.

4. Hang hooks in your locker or tack area to hold your other bridles (like we do for the lunging bridles), lunge lines and draw reins etc so that you don't have lunge lines tangled around your stuff!

5. Stack all of your saddle pads flat on top of each other for more space if you have wide enough shelves. This is obvious but I've seen lots of people folding them in half which means instead of fitting 5 or 6 on a shelf, they only get 3 to fit and then end up leaving the other saddle pads lying around.

6. Put all of your shampoos, conditioners, hair detanglers and other bottles in a large bucket. We are fortunate enough to have the horses at home and have shelving in the 'utility room' where all the bottles are stored, but when on livery yards my stuff is always kept in a large bucket. This is so much better than storing them in a bag or box with other stuff because if one of the bottles leaks it's not like you'll have to clean everything, you can just hose the bucket and ta-dah!

7. Do a cleaning spree about every six months to get rid of items that you actually haven't used. I do this every spring and autumn, and I either throw stuff that I don't needed into the bin or then ask yard friends if they would use the product.

8. Buy bandage bags like these from Eskdaron! So much neater than having bandages everywhere. They are also big enough to house boots too, I know some people use these at competitions to store bandages, bandage liners and boots and highly rate them.

9. When buying heavier rugs make sure to keep the bag so you store your other rugs in it. Whenever we buy a new winter turnout rug, we keep the bag it comes in and end up storing 2 or 3 light weight or fleece rugs in it. For four horses the amount of rugs we have would probably be enough to rug six or seven horses, so we've become very good at storing rugs in a space saving way!

10. Use an umbrella holder or a small plant pot for your whips. It keeps them together and tidy, and it also means you won't forget your whip somewhere like the side of the arena where you then can't find it the following day. 

I hope that you find these tips helpful! What tips do you have?