The Top 12 Easy Ways To Multiply Your RV Storage
At the 2024 Tampa RV Show, Heartland RV partnered with Sorted & Styled to demonstrate how to maximize RV storage in one of our new Heartland Corterra models. Sorted & Styled is a Florida-based home organization business run by Jamie Andrieu and Hillary Forst, and they recently partnered with Sandy and Jimmy of TryNSomethingNew for a video where they organized 450 square feet of RV living space.
We previously sat down to talk to Jamie and Hillary about how they approach organizing RVs differently than organizing sticks and bricks homes. Now we’ve rounded up 12 of the best ideas they’ve shared for taking advantage of every nook and cranny of storage space so Heartland owners can get a head start on optimizing their RVs for camping season.
Ways to Multiply Your RV Storage
Create Zones
The best way to combat RV storage sprawl is to create a zone for each space. For example, if your family loves playing board or card games, they should have a dedicated cabinet and not get mixed in with kitchen items.
This accomplishes two things. First, it ensures that you’re looking critically at the items in your RV to evaluate if they’re things you want to lug around. Second, it guarantees that every item in your RV has a dedicated space it can be returned to, so no one can claim there’s no room for it to be put away.
Label Everything
After you’ve created storage zones, go ahead and label them. This cabinet is for coffee supplies, that cabinet is for snack foods, and the drawer over there is for pens and paper. Even within zones, if you add any shelves, containers, or bins, you can label them with what goes inside. You could even add a symbol or graphic for each type of item if your kids aren’t old enough to read yet. Either way, everyone will always know what goes where, because the label will make it crystal clear.
And if your needs change, you can easily swap out the label and add a new one for your new items.
Use Magnetic Storage
There are some really strong magnets out there – strong enough to hold up a small bin of loose items, even while your RV is in motion. You can use magnetic storage containers on any magnetic surface in your RV, or you can install a flat magnetic board to a wall and stick the containers to that.
They’re especially handy for things you use often, like pens, markers, bathroom products, kids’ toys, tools, and more. Because the magnetic containers are easily removed, you can take down what you need and replace it easily. Or you can rearrange the configuration when you need to, giving yourself the flexibility to adapt your solutions over time.
Embrace Drawer Dividers
Most of us use drawer dividers in the kitchen to keep silverware separated and utensils organized. But if you haven’t yet embraced drawer dividers for your closet, take this as a sign. Adding drawer dividers to your dresser can help you find what you need faster by separating items into categories – for example, short-sleeve shirts, long-sleeve shirts, and sleeveless shirts.
It can also help you see everything you own at a glance. Dividers make it possible to fold your items flat and stack them from front to back, like papers in a folder. In an RV, with storage at a premium, using everything you bring with you is important. With a uniform shape and the tops of each item visible, nothing gets forgotten in the back of the drawer again.
Don't Forget About Pegboard
Like magnetic storage, a pegboard can be a great way to store items on your RV wall, create a functional and re-arrangeable storage space, and add only the elements you need as modular pieces. With a pegboard, you can add shelves, hooks, bins, clips, loops, and more to hold other items in place.
Maybe you’re old enough to remember Julia Child’s famous kitchen pegboard. On her wall, she stored all her pots and pans, with hooks attaching them to a pegboard and dark marker outlines for each pan so there was no doubt about where each piece went. Pegboards are great for storing anything you want to hang, like any kind of tools or equipment, but they’re just as great for creating a custom RV storage wall. They’re as customizable as you need them to be.
Grab a Lazy Susan
Lazy Susans consist of a circular platform that spins on a base so you can rotate items to the front as needed. In homes, they’re often used in corner cabinets that are hard to reach, but they’re just as great for other spaces, especially in your RV. Lazy Susans these days come in many sizes, materials, and configurations. Some are a flat circle with a small lip to keep items like spice jars, oils, or vinegars in place. Others have a circular tray with high side walls to help keep small, loose items tidy.
But you can use Lazy Susans beyond the kitchen. They would be great for holding beauty supplies in a cubby in the bathroom, holding art supplies or condiments that everyone at a table can reach, and even storing cleaning supplies in a tight spot. No matter how you use them, Lazy Susans are a great resource for organizing tricky spaces.
Invest in Clear Plastic Containers for Storage
Perfectly manicured kitchens and pantries have become a social media trend in the last several years, but investing in clear plastic containers can be more than a trendy design choice. In RVs, where cabinets are often unusual sizes, transferring food items to uniform custom containers can help maximize your storage.
In the TryNSomethingNew video, Sorted & Styled uses clear containers to create a snack pantry for the kids, to store commonly used foods like pasta and cereal, and to keep everything streamlined and fitting together nicely. When containers are all the same shape and share similar dimensions, it’s easy to stack them, align them, and eliminate gaps between items. When the food in your cabinets comes in packages of all different shapes and sizes, the space in between just gets wasted. Since every little bit of RV storage matters, investing in custom containers can help you make the most of it.
Add Shelf Risers
Another way to take advantage of vertical space is to use shelf risers inside the cabinets. If the shelves are taller than you need, a shelf riser gives another mini-shelf to cut the height and allows for more space to store items. For example, a shelf riser over plates can store bowls, ramekins, mugs, or other smaller dinnerware or cooking tools. They come in several different sizes to fit any cabinet, and you can even find shelf risers built to fit into corners.
There are also find risers with multiple steps, perfect for storing items like spices or canned goods to see what’s in the back without removing everything from the cabinet. Or use them in the bedroom to store medications or beauty products, or to optimize space in the bedside cubby.
Buy An Over-the-Door Laundry Bag
Laundry baskets can be bulky and take up valuable floor space in an RV. If the RV has a standard door, hook an over-the-door laundry bag to the back of it and store dirty clothes there. That way, there's separation between clothing items to keep the space tidy and use the space behind the door more efficiently.
If the doors slide open instead, don’t worry. There are also find laundry bags that hang on hooks on the wall or that have a typical hanger. There’s something for every kind of space.
Reevaluate the Cabinet Under the Sink
One trick Sorted & Styled used for Sandy in the video is to tweak the storage under the kitchen sink to keep all her cleaning supplies, sponges, sandwich baggies, trash bags, doggie bags, and dog treats together. With plastic dividers, they created a space for like items. Then they took everything out of the original packaging to make them easier to find at first glance.
Sweat the Small Stuff
Within storage spaces, smaller and more unruly items can easily spill out and create a visual mess. Things like necklaces and other jewelry, cords, batteries, pens and pencils, etc. are frequent offenders in messy drawers. But solutions like cord organizers, sticky hooks, and mini-containers can keep everything in place.
Cord organizers can be used to keep cords wrapped up when they’re stored, or to hold cords together and out of the way when they’re in use. Sticky hooks can go on the wall to hold items in plain view or be added inside cubbies or cabinets to hang things neatly out of view. Mini-containers come in handy for organizing smaller subsets of items, like rubber bands, clips, pens, sticky notes, and more within a drawer that may already have a divider in place.
Don’t Be Afraid to Build Custom Solutions
Although this is a more advanced tip, we loved how Sorted & Styled busted out the power tools to build custom pull-out shelves for the kitchen cabinets. When cabinets are low to the ground or particularly deep, pull-out shelves can make them easier to access. In the video, they used it to create an inspiring snack cabinet for the kids, utilizing the clear containers we mentioned above to arrange food items for anyone to grab. Thanks to the pull-out shelf, it’s just as easy to grab what’s in the back as what’s in the front.
The Sorted & Styled team also built a custom closet insert for the main bedroom, so Sandy and Jimmy have two hanging rods to store all their clothing, plus a shelf along the top for baskets, shoes, and off-season items. Now their storage is streamlined, organized, and made to work exactly how they need it to.
No matter how big RV storage spaces are, there’s a solution for how to organize it and maximize every last inch. Whether a weekend warrior, full-time traveler, or something in between, everyone deserves a tidy, useful space to help make trips the best they can be. With the tips above, we hope you feel empowered to start organizing, optimizing storage, and create the perfect space for your family!