How to organize your workout gear

Reader Honor asked,

Seeing your post about changing your shoes out, I’m picturing piles of shoes so here’s my question:

 

Have you found a tidy, compact way to store your shoes and running gear? Mine grows and grows and much of it is hard to stack neatly (bras, shoes) or are slippery (technical shirts, compression pants, etc.) and so defy neat shelving.

Thanks Honor for the email.  I definitely do have a lot of gear and this is how I (sorta) keep it in order.  Most of my shoes in my closet:

I keep all of my running/walking/tennis shoes in the bottom two rows; I try to keep everything in one area so I’m not constantly searching for a pair when I’m switching them out.

Keep the pairs you wear the most in the center, in the most accessible area.  And if you’re short on space, use vertical shoe racks or closet pieces that you can stack on top of each other.

I’ve been asked multiple times how to keep track of how many miles are on each pair of shoes, and I do it old school: pen and paper.

I write all my workouts down in a cheap Target notebook and in the back I tally up the miles on each pair of shoes.  I try to get about 475 miles on a pair before I wash and donate them to Goodwill.

The other question I receive is about my miles tally and how I count my running miles.  It’s just a WordPress text widget and I manually add up the miles.  I’m sure there’s some downloadable widgets that do it all for you, I just don’t know of them.

You can also use Daily Mile to track your workouts, miles etc.

Now onto clothes… I have a lot of workout clothes.  I try not to buy new ones unless I really like them (like the Costco workout tanks for only $12.99 – love them).

I keep all my compression socks in one pullout drawer:

What, I love me some compression socks.

By the way, my husband built my whole closet and bought all the pieces from Home Depot and IKEA.  California Closets are supersweet; my mom has them in her house, but you don’t have to spend a ton of money.  You can buy affordable stuff from IKEA and make it look nice.

Definitely not IKEA.

Enough dreaming of a closet the size of my house.  Back to my closet…

{IKEA drawer}

The second drawer is where I keep my most-worn gear: sports bras, shorts and tanks.  They’re easy to get to without bending down, and lordy knows I don’t want to expend extra energy.

The third drawer down is slightly less used compression shorts, compression tights, capris and long sleeves (half the drawer is sweaters and other non-workout clothes).

And the bottom drawer holds all my running skirts:

My three organizational tips: (take them for what they’re worth… I obviously can’t fold a piece of clothing if my running shoe collection depended on it)

**Keep each item in its’ own area instead of everything sprinkled all over everywhere.

This way you can quickly and easily grab a sports bra without wading through your t-shirts and jeans to find it.

**Put your most used stuff in the easiest to grab place, front and center.

I usually wear one of those Costco tanks so they’re in the front of the second drawer where I can grab one quickly.

**Go through all your gear and get rid of whatever you don’t wear or use.

If you’re always grabbing another pair of shorts, then the unworn ones are just taking up space.  Donate them to Goodwill: you can get a tax write off, you clear out your closet and free up space, and someone else can actually use the stuff. 

I go through my stuff every couple months and think, Have I worn this in this past two months?  Do I like it and do I feel good in it?  If not, see ya!

Any organizational tips you have?

Now I have a question for you guys: does anyone know of good causes to donate race medals? 

I’ve read about Medals4Mettle; they’ll take half, full or triathlon medals but you need to take the ribbons off first, and then they put their ribbon on the medal and give them to kids who are fighting life-threatening illnesses.

I kinda felt like after reading their site, they would prefer money donations more than medals, but maybe I’m way off on that and just reading into it, I don’t know.

Does anyone know of anything else to do with race medals?  Like construct my own Watts Towers with them?  I’d love to give them to a great cause… so maybe that is Medals4Mettle. 

I’m ready to get rid of them and I have a lot: 20 pounds worth!  I actually put them on my scale.  Rock ‘n’ Roll series gives out some heavy duty medals.

I also keep my race bibs and I’m not super sentimental so although I like getting a nice medal at the finish line, I have so many that I’m ready to lighten the load.  any advice?

Tagged as: clothes, gear, how to, i like stuff