A Garage (Storage Unit) in Your RV

I am really dangerous in home improvement stores. Sure, I go in with good intentions, but I invariably end up wandering around looking for things that might be useful in the RV. Home improvement does not end at the driveway – at least not in the Scribner household! This weekend I was picking up some fertilizer for the yard, when I stumbled upon one of those garage storage units that are so popular, lately. These things are supposed to be attached to the ceiling in your garage, in order to get all of your stuff up off the floor (to make room for more stuff). This particular unit measured 45-inches square – a size that I thought might fit the rear storage compartment of our RV! Sure enough, after some quick measurements in the RV, the unit looked to be a pretty good fit. Obviously, this isn’t a modification that will suite everyone – our RV has a huge storage area – but we had the same problem with the pass-through storage on our previous trailer; lots of flat stuff, like chairs, tables and patio rugs, that end up being stacked in the storage area making it difficult to get things out (or put them back in). I wanted to make better-use of the vertical space available in the storage area, and this looked like an easy way to do it.

The rear storage area in our RV is directly underneath a bed, so I used round-headed bolts through the bed platform to secure the storage unit to the ceiling of the storage compartment. The storage unit is designed to hold 250 pounds and is supposed to be bolted into the ceiling joists in a garage. I only want it to hold some chairs and a tripod for the satellite dish, so I did not worry about trying to hit any structural members.

I used the full 45-inch width of the system, but only 30-inches of the depth so that I could still access the spare tire. The modular design of the kit made this an easy task; it comes with three sections of wire-grid shelving, so I just used two of the 15-inch sections for my installation. I did have to cut-down the hangers to get the desired height.

Without the shelving, there was a lot of wasted vertical space in this compartment and gear tended to get piled-up on top of each other, making it difficult to setup and tear down camp. When it comes to organization, I need all the help I can get – and the installation of a simple storage system really paid off. Wire shelving is fairly light weight and easily adaptable to even small storage areas. In fact, the home improvement stores will even custom-cut it to whatever length you need.

Happy camping!