Organize Your Gear for a Summer on-the-Go
- By Katie S
- Mar 25, 2024
- 0 Comments
The grass is greening up, the daffodils are popping up, and its official — spring has sprung. That means camping, hiking, biking, fishing, climbing, summer sports and all the fun that comes with warmer weather. It’s the perfect time to dust off your gear, inventory your supplies, and get organized for upcoming adventures. Here are some tips to get your gear dialed in for a summer on the go. If your garage or basement looks like this after the shifting seasons, this post is for you.
1. Get Modular – Categorize It, Bag It, Waterproof It
One of the best tips for streamlining sporting gear is to organize it in a way that you only have to do once and then be set for the season. My favorite hack is to make everything modular. I have made modules of my activity-cross-over items by organizing them into RunOff Waterproof Bags by category. That way I can easily grab them for any number of activities and the items in them are more likely to stay organized between trips. I have a Medium Packing Cube packed for my essential first aid and survival gear. This one I grab for rafting, hiking, backpacking, and longer bike rides. I have a Large Packing Cube packed with all my lights (headlamps, lanterns, dog lights, string lights, etc.) which come in handy across quite a few activities. And then I have some compact modules for those small-but-mighty essentials. My most frequently grabbed one being the RunOff Waterproof Pocket with all-things-charging-related. This includes my power bank, multiple charging cords, and backup batteries. Since my phone and rechargeable lights come along on just about every adventure, so does my charging module.
2. Get Portable – Put A Hook On It
For organization, nothing beats a big ole hook. And, when it comes to S-Biners, I am a believer that bigger is better. There’s nothing more satisfying than taking a messy stack of backpacks, wetsuits, sleeping bags (basically anything big and awkwardly shaped that’s bothering you) and clipping them neatly so they are ready to hang, transport and clip anywhere. My favorite S-Biner solve to date has been for hanging our lifejackets. Lifejackets are notoriously unruly, slippery, and bulky. But now, they live happily on a huge S-Biner (size #10) on a single peg in our garage. When it’s time to go rafting, they stay clipped together for the car ride, then they clip onto the boat, and when we take shore breaks, they all clip back to the S-Biner so we don’t have to worry about a strong gust carrying them away. It’s a magically simple fix to what had been a years-long annoyance.
3. Get Gear Tie Crazy – Attach Anything to Anything, Anywhere…Pretty Much
Would it even be a Nite Ize blog if we didn’t have a section dedicated to Gear Ties? Is there anything a Gear Tie can’t help organize? If you start Gear Tie organizing, will you ever be able to stop? Can you buy Gear Ties in 1000 packs? We should probably add a warning label: “Gear Tie problem solving is addictive." You’ll find the more you use them, the more you ask yourself, “can I solve this problem with a Gear Tie?” So, our tip for gear organizing is simple: As you start the process just keep a Pro Pack or two handy. You’re going to use them.
4. Get a Label On It – With Great Adventure Comes a Great Many Accessories
Labeling your gear is key, but labeling your actual keys is what will really save the day. Nothing is more frustrating than looking for the one and only key that will unlock that one specific lock you only use for one specific activity, and having to search through drawers and piles of orphaned keys to find it. Over the years we have accumulated quite a stack of what we call our “adventure keys” — keys to rod racks, bike racks, bike locks, the pod, the trailer, and on and on the list goes. Labeling them with IdentiKey SlideLocks has helped save more than one travel day.
We hope that a few of these tips will come in handy when the spring-cleaning bug strikes. If you have any favorite gear-organizing hacks, please share them with us on social media (@niteize). And, if cleaning and organizing isn’t your thing, just remember, it’s not really about that — it's about having what you need ready to get out there faster, go further, and have more fun when adventure calls.
