We all love having a lot of equipment to choose from in our home gyms. However, we’re often constrained by space, so organizing and storing our equipment is a huge part of owning a home gym. Equipment companies are getting more creative with their storage options as home gyms become more and more popular. Below is an overview of the types of storage available, and when each type makes the most sense.
Equipment Storage Types
There are a few major storage types for home gyms. Though the options range in size, price and capacity, they all can help you organize your equipment so you get the most out of your gym. Some combination of all types is likely the key to maximize your space.
Stand Alone Storage Solutions
Stand-alone storage includes purpose-built racks and shelving that have the sole purpose of storing equipment. Often this looks like a weight tree, horizontal plate rack or multi-shelved storage units.
They may be mounted on wheels, allowing for ease of movement, or could be in a fixed position. Wheeled options are great for home gyms because they allow you to continually alter your gym set up and create floor space in areas as you need it.
A negative to stand alone storage options is that they only serve one purpose. They’re there to store equipment – nothing else. This means they can take up valuable space in a small home gym.
Stand-alone storage units generally store large volumes of equipment and are often customizable to suit your needs. They tend to come in at all price ranges too – from fairly cheap dumbbell and plate racks to expensive multi-tiered beefy storage racks and corner units.
Rack Mounted Storage
As the name suggests, rack mounted storage options use your squat rack (LINK to 130+) as the storage base. Generally, you’ll find more storage options for your rack if you have a 4- or 6-post power rack, compared to half rack or squat stand.
The most basic version of this type of storage is plate storage pegs that are mounted to squat rack uprights or the rack’s base.
Rack mounted shelves, like this one from Rogue, provide a ton of storage space at the back of your rack by connecting between your rack’s uprights.
• Read More: Everything you need to know about squat rack attachments and accessories.
Vertical and horizontal barbell storage is also available for racks. The development of The Barbell Anchor from Darko Lifting has been a game changer for storing 2-4 barbells in your rack.
Racks can also have hooks for chains and bands, like shown below.
Wall Mounted Storage
Wall mounted storage solutions come in a variety of options, such as shelves, band hooks, barbell holders and plate pegs.
PRx Performance is the leader in wall mounted systems, though the major home gym equipment players (Rogue, Rep, Fray, etc.) are providing more wall based options each year.
The great thing about wall mounted storage is that it keeps floor space available for other equipment or for movements. This can help make your gym feel bigger.
However, wall mounted options usually require you to anchor the system to a stud in the wall. Wall mounted storage is ‘set and leave’. You mount the system and it’s there forever – unless you want to deal with large holes in your wall that need to be repaired.
We currently have a vertical barbell holder, bench bracket and peg board as our wall mounted storage options. They allow us to keep our equipment off the floor, while really only using (wall) space that would otherwise be empty.
Wall mounted options are great, especially if you have a lot of wall space but not floor space.
Other Storage Options
There are a number of other storage options than your run of the mill, purpose built pieces. People are becoming more and more creative with their storage, with Facebook and Instagram pages highlighting the creativity.
Storage Pegs on Equipment
Though using storage pegs on machines isn’t the most ‘creative’ storage option, it often is very efficient. For instance, we can store 3-4 sets of bumper plates on our leg press machine. This is huge because it doesn’t take up extra floor space, and the plates are right where we need them when we go to use the leg press.
Plate loaded machines generally have pegs to store plates. These pegs can also be used to hang bands, weight vests, or anything else that you can imagine.
Slatwall Options
One of our favourite gyms uses slatwall panels to provide a ton of storage options. This has allowed our friend to store all of his ‘garage stuff’ on the wall, and also a bunch of gym equipment.
Generally, slatwall panels are fairly strong and robust and can support a lot of weight per square inch so they’re a great option for wall-based storage.
Get your slatwall solutions on Amazon.
IKEA Storage Units and Garage Shelving
Another great option is IKEA storage units and general shelving from hardware stores. Though they’re not purpose built for gym equipment, they often are space efficient and able to handle heavy loads.
We use the IKEA Trones shoe cabinets to store our shoes (duh) and other accessories like chalk, lifting straps, pens and workout journals.
General garage shelving units might not be very aesthetic but they can definitely store kettlebells, medicine balls and accessories. Adding on some bookshelf dividers like these heavy duty ones from Rogue or lightweight versions from Amazon can get you a cheap plate storage system.