RV Storage: Tips and Hacks for Organizing a Small Space
RV living is all about making the most of the space in your motorhome or travel trailer. No matter how big your coach is, it will sometimes feel small. RV storage is always at a premium, so you need to figure out how to use it as efficiently as possible.
There are a lot of van life and RV living tips and hacks out there, but some of them aren’t as practical as they seem.
We’re going to weed through those RV storage and organization tips and hacks and pull out the best, most practical solutions for thriving in a small space. Most of these tips are inexpensive and accessible to everyone. If you want something fancier, we have some custom upgrades for you, as well.
Pre-Organization Cleaning and Inventory
It’s tempting to dive right in and start with clever, space-saving ideas. But all the ideas and gadgets and RV living hacks in the world aren’t going to help if you don’t start with the basics.
That’s right; we’re talking about cleaning and inventory.
The best way to free up storage space in your travel trailer, camper, or motorhome is to get rid of stuff you don’t need. We all have it. The extra clothes we don’t wear, the kitchen gadgets we don’t use, and that parka just in case we get stuck in the snow. In August. In Arizona.
So the first storage and organization tip is to take all your stuff out of its hiding places. Go through it with a critical eye and leave the stuff you don’t need at home. Better yet, sell it at your next garage sale or pass it on to someone new to RV living who can use it.
While you have everything out of your rig, you might as well give it all a good cleaning. Why waste a golden opportunity to get the dust and dirt out of your cabinets and drawers?
Yes, it’s a hassle. But you’ll be so glad you did it when you see how much space you’ve freed up and how great your RV looks and feels.
Use Your Vertical Space
You’ve pared down your stuff, hooray! But you will collect more, and you still need a good way to organize and store your essentials.
We know that floor space is at a premium in every RV. The last thing you want is storage solutions that take up a lot of that precious space. So let’s leave the floor alone and use your vertical space.
At home, our walls are mostly for art and other décor. In our RVs, walls are storage gold mines. And don’t forget your other vertical spaces: bathroom and bedroom doors, cabinet sides and doors, even the back of the driver’s seats. Your outside storage compartments may also have some vertical space begging to be used.
The key to vertical storage and organization is to use it for small items that would otherwise take up drawer, cabinet, or closet space.
Your Vertical Space RV Storage Tools
- Pegboard
- Command Hooks and Strips
- Magnets
- Hanging Shoe Racks
- Shallow Bins and Racks
- Custom Upgrades
Pegboard
Pegboard is not just for your garage. It’s an excellent way to store and organize items in your RV kitchen and your exterior storage compartments. Hang spatulas, serving spoons, cutting boards, dish towels, and more on your kitchen pegboard.
If you don’t like how pegboard looks, mount a shower or curtain rod on the wall and use S-hooks to hang utensils, pot holders, and mesh bags.
Use the exterior compartment pegboard like you would in your garage: for tools. In both places, some bungee cords will keep things in place while your RV is moving.
Command Hooks and Strips
Command hooks and strips are easy to use and inexpensive, and you can put them anywhere. Use hooks for towels, hanging kitchen utensils, a convenient way to organize hats and jackets, or hanging toiletry bags.
Command strips, with their hook and loop design, make it easy to mount a mesh bag for dog toys or keep track of your remote. Seriously, who doesn’t want a remote they can stick on the wall?
You can use any sort of hooks, but Command hooks won’t mar the walls or cabinets of your RV and are easily removed and replaced.
Magnets
Get small magnetized baskets to keep chip clips, notepads, and other small items organized on your fridge door and out of your drawers. Magnetic spice racks mounted on the wall look great and save a lot of cupboard space.
Magnets are your RV living friend, but not for everything. Please don’t use a magnetic knife rack in your RV. Yes, we’ve seen the suggestion, too, and we think it’s dangerous. No magnet lasts forever and knives flying around a moving vehicle will ruin your vacation. It’s not worth the risk. If you want to use your vertical space for knife storage, get an enclosed rack for the wall or inside a cabinet.
Hanging Racks
Hanging shoe racks may be the most versatile RV storage hack of them all. These racks can hang over a door or on a closet rod. They’re multi-functional storage wizards.
An over-the-door shoe rack is great for toiletries, kids’ toys and games, kitchen towels and sponges, and anything that fits in those shoe-sized compartments. To keep mold and mildew at bay, look for a mesh over-the-door rack.
A hanging shoe rack that attaches to a closet rod is excellent for towels, clothes, linens, and even toilet paper.
The hanging rack is so great for RV storage that we love it in all shapes and sizes. You can get one that fits over the back of the captain’s chairs or a tiny one that hangs by command hooks by the entry. We love these for campervans and smaller Class C motorhomes.
We really like the ones you can hang next to your bed if you don’t have space for a bedside table in your van or small motorhome. They simply tuck under the mattress and keep your glasses, phone, book, and other essentials organized, safe, and out of the way.
If you love this idea, try a hanging rack padded headboard. When you’re ready to go to sleep, reach back and tuck your book into the pocket on the wall, hit the remote on your Leisure LED recessed lighting, and call it a night.
Shallow Bins and Racks
Using command hooks, some double-sided adhesive, or a nice solid set of screws, you can create attractive, practical storage for things you want to keep at hand. You can buy easy-to-use bins on Amazon. You can also find one-of-a-kind racks at vintage stores or even try a pretty shower caddy.
Use these bins and racks in the kitchen for spices and produce. Install some by the entry door for sunglasses, sunscreen, flashlights, and other small items that are easy to misplace. Rolled towels look nice on a rack in the bathroom.
Another fantastic bathroom option is a three-part dispenser attached to your shower wall. Use it for shampoo, conditioner, and body wash.
Custom Upgrades
If you’d like something customized for your RV, consider a spice rack that pulls up from the kitchen counter, get a good medicine cabinet with a sturdy latch, or have tall vertical shelving or drawers installed. Custom cabinets that go all the way to the ceiling are another way to use that vertical space and keep your stuff organized and contained.
Find Multi-Use Items
RVers are always on the lookout for one thing that serves many functions. These are the ultimate space-savers, giving you two (or three, or more) for the space of one.
Of course, the ultimate multi-use RV storage and organization item is the hanging rack, but it’s not the only one. Pick up some mason jars at a secondhand store and screw the lids into a board. Mount that board under a cabinet and you have storage for anything small that you don’t want flying around your cab.
Collapse It
Not everything can have more than one function. But there are a lot of things we don’t use until we get to our destination. Finding collapsible versions of necessities makes them much easier to store.
Easy-to-find collapsible items include trash cans, hampers, laundry baskets, and colanders.
Put Storage in Your Storage
The most efficient way to use your existing RV storage is to make open spaces into useful compartments. Start with drawer organizers. We all have a junk drawer at home but none of us should have a junk drawer in our RV.
Drawer organizers are not only for utensils. If you have a spare drawer, use an organizer to keep your keys, change, pens and pencils, and small tools handy and organized. This is also an excellent way to keep those things from becoming projectiles when you’re on the road. If you have a deep drawer, try a multi-level organizer.
For cabinets and closets, make sure you are, once again, using your vertical space.
Find clear, plastic, stackable containers for your food. Not only do they make the best use of your kitchen cabinets, but they also deter curious rodents. Find nesting pots and pans, mixing bowls, and measuring cups and spoons. Use shelf racks or under-shelf bins to use more vertical cabinet space.
Use dish cradles to store plates. You’ll be surprised how many more dishes you can fit into a cupboard with cradles and stacking racks.
In your closets, use tension rods to make the most of your hanging space. Tension rods are also handy for segmenting cabinets for storing flat items like cookie sheets and cutting boards.
Use baskets, packing cubes, and foldable bins to organize your clothes, linens, and other closet essentials. They make the most of your space and keep things from shifting when you’re on the move.
Were you wondering when we might get back to exterior storage? The answer is now, with a storage bin or caddy for your set-up equipment. You’ll save a lot of time and frustration by creating a set-up kit that keeps everything together and organized. How exciting to never have to search for an errant wheel chock ever again!
Custom Upgrades
We have a lot of experience putting storage in storage. Storage drawers under booth seats, storage space under bench seats, pull-out counters and tables, and storage behind seat backs are just a few of our custom upgrades.
Use Your Ceiling Space
Not all horizontal spaces are created equal. You don’t want to waste floor space, but what about ceiling space? If you’re traveling with kids, a paper plate dispenser might be in order.
You can mount mesh bags on the ceiling to hold lightweight items while you’re in transit. Try mounting a spice rack or a small storage rack under a cabinet.
One of the best RV space savers is lighting built into ceilings and beneath cabinets. Use Leisure LED lights and light strips to create a nice ambiance and give you plenty of light to cook, read, and enjoy your interior space.
No matter how big or small your RV is, there are ways to create more storage. Use your space wisely to make the most of your RV living!
