Can we talk about tack room storage options?

Miniature Horse Talk Forums

Help Support Miniature Horse Talk Forums:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

wingnut

Well-Known Member
Joined
Apr 16, 2009
Messages
2,149
Reaction score
138
I've been spending a lot of time in my house getting things organized. It's a work in process with some trial and error along the way, but I'm seeing some really positive progress and learning a lot too. I'm starting to think about getting my tack room better set up for organization. Some ideas I've had include buying returned, mismatched, and/or slightly damaged cabinets from places like HD or Lowes. I was also thinking this morning that getting some really sturdy L-brackets topped with some inexpensive wide boarding of some stripe or again, returned laminate counter material. This would be hung at counter level and made wide enough to put our feed bins (metal trash cans) under. If you've done anything like this, I'd love to hear about it.

One other thing I'd love recommendations or suggestions on is storage of tools like manure forks, pitch forks, shovels, brooms, etc.

Pictures would be great!
 
I can't help you...my tack room, so to speak, since I board, is a Rubber maid tub, in my trunk. LOL But your idea sounds like a good one, to me.
 
When I downsized I converted two 10x10 stalls into a workshop area for my hubby. I placed a grid work of pressure treat 2x4s on the floor and placed roughcut oak planks down. I didn't want the toolboxes and such on the very damp concrete. I did make some countertops doing exactly what you suggested, making supports and putting rough cut planks down for the countertop. Not perfect, but looks decent and serves its purpose. I'll see if I can charge the camera to snap some pics for you.
 
If you are thinking about cabinets you can often find someone who is remodeling a kitchen and will give you the whole set up(just to get rid of it) countertops included.You can use what you need and pass the rest on to someone else.My kitchen was very old and cabinets were built right on to the walls(no backs)but we reused many of the door in the barn for little shallow cabinets that hold many different things in many different areas nears stalls.Save lots of steps and is very handy.Have fun on your project.
 
I love shelves...and hooks, but mostly shelves. I have metal grain bins lining one wall of the tack/feed room and above those I screwed bridle brackets up along the wall so that everything could be hung up so as to maximize the useable space. On the wall where the windows are, I hung my saddle racks so that the wall space as not wasted, plus who really wants to reach over their head to list up their saddle?. I installed a wall of cubby hole shelves and assigned a few to each boarder, so their small things can be organized. I have a work bench with grooming totes on top and odds and ends in bins underneath. I set up metal shelves from lowes to organize all of the supplements and buckets. I like old steamer trunks for blanket and sheet storage. I have wide alleys in my stable, so each horse has his/her own trunk. I welcome boarders to have their own as long as they do not obstruct the alley. Folding blanket bars are a great idea for stall doors too. In stables with a lot of horse they really make use of every available inch of space. SS tack sells awesome organizational space saving tools, like door organizers, tack racks, bandage and blanket racks and shelving units. I like to make bridle brackets out of logs. Take a round log and slice it up on the table saw and screw it up to the wall. It preserved the shape of your bridal's crown piece, is really inexpensive, and looks rustic. You can make saddle racks that way too, just put an eye bolt in the wall and a hook a few inches into the top of the log and it hangs on the wall nicely to support your saddle. Any way that you can maximize wall space and get stuff off of the floor is a good idea, as it makes it easier to clean the room and harder for mice to get into things.
 
I have an old building we moved in for my feed and tack area, its 12x16' with a divider wall in it (I removed one wall, and left one). I have shelves with totes and hooks for tack storage. I do have a few pictures, but its hard to really tell what's there.

Here's the feed area, you can kind of see the shelf above the garbage cans:

mini shed - feed area.jpg

Here's the door to the tack area, you can kind of see the shelving and hooks:

mini shed - tack area door.jpg

And, just looking straight in the door; feed to the left, tack to the right:

mini shed - view in the door.jpg

These pictures were taken right after I finished working on the building, I lined and painted the whole interior; its much more full now, and there is hardly a place that isn't taken up by something.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Tack room! Feed room! What's that? (only a dream for me LOL!)

I have all my horsey stuff stuck in corners of the laundry room , garage, shed, and guest bedroom. I do have some shelves and hooks in the stall/run-in for the things we use everyday tho....
 
Thanks everyone! Great input!

candycar: Our "barns" are run-in sheds (12x12 and 12x10) with 8ft tackrooms. These sheds have had their run-ins divided in half and doors or gates added so I have 4 stalls. One tackroom is devoted to hay storage. The other is where I keep feed, halters & leads, grooming supplies etc. The sheds/barns are right outside our house...about 50 feet from our basement door where I come out to go to the barns. I have an area just inside of the basement door that I also use for storage. I want to take that area down to just certain items like sheets/fly sheets/blankets (stored a large plastic tote) and my show gear (boots, clothing, show halters).

In the tack room the biggest challenge is dealing with all the various grooming tools. I don't have a great handle on that or gotten something of a "system" established. I'm thinking of the used cabinets for store of those things. Or, on top of the shelving and/or counters that I create/install will hold some form of drawer system where I can label the drawers and put the appropriate items in each (i.e., all curry combs in one). Or create a grooming drawer per horse. Or get a grooming box together of the basic tools and create one for each horse. Wow! The ideas are flowing now! LOL!

I'm going to start watching Craigslist, road sides and put an alert on Facebook for used cabinets. Definitely plan on adding more hooks as that's the easiest thing for me to do myself. I like the idea of L brackets and boards for the same reason.

Keep the ideas coming!
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Wingnut, If you have the wall space, hanging shoe organizers would work great for grooming tools. Also I saw at the Dollar store, they have small collapsible organizers that might work for shelf areas.

I use small plastic baskets attached to the wall (out of horse reach) in each "stall" for grooming tools. A couple of well placed nails and they are removable so if I need to I just take the whole basket with me to my grooming area. Got 'em at the dollar store!

If I had enough flat land, I'd have a set-up similar to yours. My girls are about 50 ft from my bedroom exit door, but the stall/run-in is in a very small space at the bottom of a hill, the only flat area I could put it !
 
candycar: Our property slopes down from the house. The beauty of being married to a "dirt man" (i.e., heavy equipment operator is that he was able to level out the area for the barns so they could be near the house.
 
My tack room is very small, but it works.
default_smile.png
I have a few storage ideas in mine.

I keep all my treats etc. in little jars. (This is mostly for looks.)

IMG_2896.JPG

I have this little shelf cupboard that I found at a garage sale that I keep various items like baby wipes, sponges, scissors...

IMG_2899.JPG

I hang my grooming bag from the handle on the shelves, nice and easy to grab.

IMG_2900.JPG

I use a little bin that I already had to store his hay cubes. I just painted it and lined it with plastic.

IMG_2902.JPG

IMG_2903.JPG

This is just a picture of my feed room with the hay he came with, hay cubes, shavings, and the storage bin.

IMG_2905.JPG

This is the rack I have for hanging my bedding fork etc. I can't remember what it's called, but it's a metal rack that you screw in with rubber things that hold the items up.

IMG_2907.JPG

IMG_2906.JPG
 
At my mothers house, she has the tall old school storage cabinets for blankets, a place to hang blankets to dry (IMPORTANT!), an old medicine cabinet mounted for medicines, plastic drawers for "small stuffs," and hangers for bridles.

I board, but my stuff is in a trunk, but everyday stuff is in a brush bag hanging by my stall. My board owner has harness racks, underneath are feed stored in plastic "thingers" made for that purpose. They can actually be locked! Theres a kitchen counter, with cupboards underneath and some on top as welll.
 
I have an area that is 10 x 10 opposite their stall area and then an 8 x 10 area I use to stack their hay and bags of pine shavings. So I guess you could say it is an L shaped storage/tack area! I was going to have the floors poured concrete but it was fall by the time everything was complete last year and my minis arrived. So we went with heavy duty stall rubber mats for flooring in that area as we'll as the stall area to see how well that worked through winter. Well I love the rubber flooring in the tack are, there is about a 3 inch space on the perimeters where there is the crushed bluestone that is underneath the mats. This is great for keeping things dry, sweeping, and cleaning with water/disinfectant then sweeping away!! So I will not concrete after all. I have one of those hook/hangers that hangs up over a 2x4 for halters, leads etc. I use a plastic tote for grooming supplies. And I store grain/feed in and old fashion galvanized tall can with a secure lid, no mouse will get in there and it keeps feed fresh! Two weeks ago I had an electrician in to wire in lights, plugs and ceiling fan, just waiting on the power company to hook us up! Well that is about it for my tack/storage room. It is a small barn but works great for me and so far I am loving my barn.
 
I have cabinets and shelves. You can't go wrong with cabinets. That's where I keep my meds and wormers and tons of ribbons and scrunchies. Not sure where they came from but by all means, check out freecycle or Craigslist. For my grooming tools, I have those plastic totes with handles on them and keep them on the shelves. You can't ever have enough shelves. Mine are hard plastic with pvc pipes holding them up I think from Lowe's and the shelves are adjutable height. Then I have an old bookcase type thing for more shelves. Then I have an L bracket thing also with just a long sheet of board going across which is where I keep extra buckets. Its up really high and I need a stool to get up to it. I did your counter idea but then I ripped it out because it took up too much space because I only had a 10 X 10 tack room to work with and dragging the feed cans back and forth underneath every feed time was a total pain. But its a good concept if you have the space. I also have Rubbermaid containers for stuff i need, but don't use often such as one for sheets and blankets and spare halters and supplies stacked in a corner. I wish my camera batteries didn't just go flat or I would have taken better pics for you.

This is Dan installing my cabinets

View attachment 22746

This is one of the shelves next to the hot water heater which shows the grooming totes

View attachment 22747

And one of the cabinets filled with my scrunchies and ribbons etc.

View attachment 22748
 
I have cabinets and shelves. You can't go wrong with cabinets. That's where I keep my meds and wormers and tons of ribbons and scrunchies. Not sure where they came from but by all means, check out freecycle or Craigslist. For my grooming tools, I have those plastic totes with handles on them and keep them on the shelves. You can't ever have enough shelves. Mine are hard plastic with pvc pipes holding them up I think from Lowe's and the shelves are adjutable height. Then I have an old bookcase type thing for more shelves. Then I have an L bracket thing also with just a long sheet of board going across which is where I keep extra buckets. Its up really high and I need a stool to get up to it. I did your counter idea but then I ripped it out because it took up too much space because I only had a 10 X 10 tack room to work with and dragging the feed cans back and forth underneath every feed time was a total pain. But its a good concept if you have the space. I also have Rubbermaid containers for stuff i need, but don't use often such as one for sheets and blankets and spare halters and supplies stacked in a corner. I wish my camera batteries didn't just go flat or I would have taken better pics for you.

This is Dan installing my cabinets

March tack room.jpg

This is one of the shelves next to the hot water heater which shows the grooming totes

Novembe 2012 004.jpg

And one of the cabinets filled with my scrunchies and ribbons etc.

Novembe 2012 005.jpg
 
You can usually find sturdy plastic household cleaning supply totes, that are almost identical to horse grooming totes, in the household cleaning supply section/area of stores like Wal-Mart, K-Mart, Meijer, DollarGeneral, etc. They are almost always cheaper than horse grooming totes that you find at tack shops. That is how I store and "tote" all of my grooming tools. I like being able to take all of my favorite grooming tools right to the horse. They are great for taking along with you to shows too, you just load your grooming tote in your trailer when it's time to go.

I use cheap "over the door" racks of hooks that I got at one of those "everything for $1" stores to hang/store all of my halters and leadropes on in my tack area in my barn; they are plastic-coated metal and have six hooks. I have an entire wall covered with them, they hang over the horizontal 2x4 wall supports in my barn which is a metal pole barn (the outer "shell" of the barn), they wouldn't work if you have all vertical wall supports.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Find a local custom cabinet guy. Let him know that you are looking for used cabinets and ask if he will call you next time he tears out a kitchen or something to do a remodel. Usually they just throw the old cabinets out. We put TONS of cabinets in our garage and got them all for free. We've installed roll outs in a couple of the cabinets and put trash cans with dog food in them. The roll outs are like really shallow drawers in the bottom of the cabinet. You just set the trash can on it then can slide it in and out of the cabinet on the drawer rollers. It's pretty handy.

Rakes, shovels, and the like are all hung on pegs. We just hung a row of wood pegs on the wall. We space two close together so the handle fits between the pegs and the shovel or rake head rests on the tops of the pets. We space the sets of pegs about 8" apart so we have plenty of room. Right outside the tack room door we hung 2 pegs to hang our big push broom on. We also hung evenly spaced pegs for halters, harnesses, and the like. Oh and hubby says if wood pegs are a pain for you to just use big bolts. They work just as well and are easier to install.

The two walls without pegs got upper cabinets. These cabinets have first aid type stuff and any small bottles, jars, or other containers of various horsy concoctions. We also left a space between two of the lower cabinets so we could roll a chair underneath the counter. We use that as our "desk" if we have to fill out paperwork or mix up supplements or anything like that.
 
You guys have given me some really great ideas!! Thanks! It will take some time to pull it all together but when I have it, I'll be sure to share the results.
default_yes.gif
 

Latest posts

Back
Top