Creative Ways To Store Your Prepping Supplies

Feel like you don’t have enough storage space for your preps? One of the biggest issues that preppers face is finding enough storage for their food, water and other preparedness supplies.

Prepping isn’t always about ‘stuff’, that’s for sure. However, we should never be ashamed for wanting to be prepared to the very best of our ability. Food and water alone can take up quite a bit of space. And if you’re in an apartment or RV, it can be even more difficult.

No matter how much or little space you have, getting creative with our preps also allows us to be better organized as well as to potentially hide our preps a bit better from plain sight.

Here are creative ways to store your preps:

Wall Space

We tend to take our wall space for granted. Shelves or hangers are one of the simplest options that are often overlooked. Simple shelving units along the dead space on your walls, can hold quite a bit of preps.

Here’s an example of the shelves I used in my main office space. These are affordable, durable and one of the easiest shelves to put up. Of course, you can always make your own shelves out of whatever material you choose.

Here’s an example of some hangers. We live in an RV so we use sticky hangers, but of course, any type of hangers will work. We use hangers for our clothing, bags, keys, whatever. You can store things inside of bags and hang them. Those hangers can take a surprising amount of weight. Use hangers to your advantage. Of course, if you live in a home with a frame, your hangers can hold quite a bit more weight.

Use the dead space on your wall to hold a variety of things that don’t ‘look’ like prepping supplies. Like:

• candles
• foods (keep out of direct sunlight)
• wipes
• water (again, keep out of direct sunlight)
• boxes that you can’t see through very well
• hygiene items
• books
• fabric
• crafts
• board games

The list of items could go on and on. Of course, if your shelving isn’t in a public space and you don’t have to ‘hide’ it necessarily, then that might make things easier. However, I’d still recommend organizing them in some type of boxes or bins.

Bins

Any type of containers or bins are a great way to organize our preps. The larger bins can also be stacked and used as side tables, just throw a cloth over them and people will be none the wiser!

There are all different sizes of bins, many of the smaller ones can be found at the dollar store. You can also repurpose old containers like popcorn tins.

The big black bins with locking lids that I like so much are from Home Depot. They’re durable, affordable and stackable.

Bins can be placed under tables, under beds, inside of closets, in the garage (if the supplies can handle the garage temps), or even in the shed (again, if the supplies can handle the shed temps). Smaller bins can be used inside of cabinets or small closets to keep everything organized. And again, they can be stacked and used as tables if needed.

Don’t forget to keep your gear inventoried so you can easily find your supplies when you need it without having to search through a million bins. Instead, you can search on a piece of paper and find the exact bin within seconds or just a minute or two. Number or label each bin accordingly so you can easily find the bin on the inventory sheet to find the supplies inside of it.

Under Furniture

You don’t need bins to place supplies under furniture. Many supplies fit nicely under furniture such as toilet paper, ammo, food, water and a variety of other supplies. Of course, keeping a good inventory is essential to remember where you placed these items.

Many people might even have space behind their couch or bed or other furniture, which are also great places to store gear.

I would recommend keeping any food items secure inside of a tote or bin or something to keep rodents and bugs out of it.

Dead Space

Walls aren’t the only dead space. Transform dead spaces or improperly used spaces. Such as inside cabinets, closets or even under seats. We use bins or shelves inside of our cabinets or closets to get maximum storage space. Throwing things inside of an open space will make it disorganized, but it’s just not an efficient use of space.

In our RV, we have dead space underneath our children’s bunk beds that they aren’t using, so we use it! We also took out a chair that we were never going to use and made it into a cabinet and toy chest. We use every available space we can. We also have some dead space under the dining seats. They say you’re not supposed to store anything under there, but we’re stationary. I would be very careful about storing things under those seats when you’re in motion, it’s not the most secure area, but it’s certainly a good space if you’re stationary.

Find the dead space in your home and figure out ways to better maximize the space.

Organization is Key

The main theme throughout this whole post has been organization. The better organized you are, the easier it’ll be to find everything, utilize space and feel more at peace with your preps. When you’re trying to find more storage space, take a moment to evaluate your current spaces and see if you can transform it into an even better space.

The other day I saw someone transform a tiny little corner that had one little cabinet on it and build an entire shelving/closet unit within the small corner. It was brilliant. Look to the internet for transformation ideas.

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Was any of this ‘creative’? Maybe not, but people tend to get into their own heads and forget about some of the more simple options to use their space wisely. I do hope this has inspired you to look at your space and make the most of it.