Day 45: Sports Equipment

What: Sports equipment

Why: Why is it that sports equipment always ends up in all areas of the house? The garage, the basement, bedrooms, mudroom, you name it. It is hard to keep sports equipment under wraps. Sporting equipment too, is something that takes up a lot of space (depending on how many sports you are involved in). When it comes to the day of the sporting event or practice, can you find what you are looking for? Or are you one of those people who is scrabbling to find the other shin pad, tearing apart the house in the process? Here are some ideas to keep your sporting equipment in order, while living with less.

How:
1. Find all of the balls, ropes, pumps, frisbees, etc. that you have – anything that you would label as “sports.” This also means shin guards, pads, cleats, as well.

2. Go through every item and ask yourself if it is used. If not, donate it or find a family that would appreciate it. Make sure to check if there are holes, if it stays inflated, is it cracked, etc.

3. Decide how many you need of everything – if you have too many of one thing, donate it or find a neighborhood kid to give it to.

4. Now comes the fun part – the organizing! Decide how you want to organize it. Here are a few ideas:

• Depending on how much you have, you could put it all in one box
• Divide everything up by sport
• Keep shoes in another place if needed (a shoe rack located by the sporting equipment may be helpful)
• Divide equipment up by season (some seasons will be together)

5. Whatever is the easiest way for YOU, is the best. Organizing sports equipment can be daunting because sports take a lot of “stuff,” but keeping it organized and in ONE place, keeps those frantic moments from happening.

Confession of the Day: When I was going through our sporting equipment box, I found around 8 frisbees. Some of them were cracked, chipped, and not worth keeping. We had accumulated so many over the years and honestly, we rarely use them. We decided to keep I think 2 and the rest we put on a garage sale. Basketballs. I had WAY too many basketballs – basketballs that did not have any grip left, basketballs that did not stay inflated, and basketballs that had seen better days. Now we have two – a MUCH better number. It is easy to have too many of something – even when it comes to sporting equipment. Don’t something like sports equipment dominate your house – organize it and LIVE WITH LESS.