Spring Cleaning And Organization

For the life of me, I do not understand how you can have a big barn and not organizing the crap out of it. So many barns have stuff just laying around, especially boarding stables. I always have a sudden urge to organize things.

Organizing feed rooms is important to keep rodents out and preserve your horses health and the quality of the feed. If you are going to organize anything do it here!

Separate grain into their own containers that seal shut to keep the mice poop out. If you buy your grain in large quantities bins are an option.

Some grain bins are expensive, so creating your own may be the way to go. I like this one that uses muck buckets and a homemade system to hold the muck buckets. The lid slide down over the bucket. Tip: buy the buckets at Target, where you pay $7 a piece. Buying at the feed store usually averages $15/each.

For boarding stables, sometimes having the boarder separate the grain into baggies with the supplements is easier, especially if you require the boarder to buy their own grain. It also provides the horse owners with reassurance that you are feeding their horse the correct items, they can always go back and see how many bags are left. It is also easy for them to add supplements without the confusion of re-coordinating with the workers or manager.

Storage cubes found in Target, Home Depot, Lowes, etc are great for supplement organization. Just throw the Smartpaks or supplement baggies in a cube basket, each horse has their own.

Horse blankets always need organization. One hanging on a stall looks nice, more than that starts to look junky, things start falling down, and it's just annoying. If you do not want to spend the money on tons of expensive blanket holders, just get hooks from the hardware store that are large enough to hold the weight of a blanket and hang from the chest straps off the hook.

If you own a boarding stable, consider a room (rug room) where during the off season blankets may be properly stored.

Also consider placing blankets in plastic (save their original plastic cases) to avoid things falling all over the place.

Don't have a rug room, consider ceiling storage which you usually purchase for garages. That way you can store heavy blankets during the off season.

It doesn't take much to organize a tack room. You are hanging up bridle racks and saddle racks anyways, hand them up in a nice pattern. 

Great for private barns, schooling barns, and trainers to have all their saddles in one spot.

Add in cabinets and shelves to hide some stuff behind doors to make the appearance of a tidy tack room.

Give your boarders the option to lock up their tack. Lockers also hide their stuff...if you have some sloppy boarders you don't have to see their mess!

Want to save a few bucks then just give the boarders cubbyholes.

Have a place for everything by hanging racks on walls in grooming stalls or wash stalls.

Use a shoe organizer in your tack locker, over the door, or in your trailer for boots, wraps, grooming tools, etc.

Great cabinet mounts organization would work well in shelves and in boarder's lockers for fly spray, shampoo, boots, and other odds and ends.

Mesh stretchy trunk luggage can be used for boots, wraps, leadllines, or any lighter items. Typically only $13. Mountable on tack trunks, tack lockers, cabinets, and walls.

For lunge lines, tack, halters...we all know hooks can be expensive if you purchase through a tack store. I suggest hitting up the hardware store or Wal Mart and buying hooks there. You can get hooks for under $10.

For manure forks, shovels, brooms try yard storage hooks found at places like Lowes, hardware stores, Home Depot, etc. $8 and up.

Both of these are at Wal Mart from $8-$12

Happy Spring Cleaning!