These home gym organization ideas will help you create the ultimate workout space.

From everyday items like a bookshelf to tire racks, we show you ways to organize a home gym so the space is still functional for other uses. After all, maybe you still want to fit your parked car in your garage or the sleeping setup in your spare room!

Read on to learn some very nifty home gym organization tips to help you create a new, healthy routine and save space.

Identify the Workout Space

Elva Fonseca, owner of Sensational Organizing, advises her clients eager to improve their workout space at home to first identity the space for their home gym. This is necessary because the amount of space determines the type of equipment you can buy.

If you don’t have a garage or can’t imagine finding space there, a spare bedroom, home office or a portion of the living room might also be ideal.

“In order to create the habit of working out, a home gym needs to be placed in a location where it’s going to be used. Take into consideration the most convenient place you can put it and use it and create that habit,” Fonseca said.

There is one room she opposes using for a home gym.

“I tend to steer away from the bedroom because the equipment tends to become the place where people put their halfway clean halfway dirty clothes. It becomes that armchair for clothes,” she said. “Your bedroom is where you go to lay your head to rest, it’s not very conducive for a workout. It’s also not very romantic.”

Declutter Your Space for Working Out

Fonseca suggests you start your home workout journey by first emptying out the room you’re going to use for your workouts. You’ll need to decide what items truly need to go back inside, and to be firm. It can here take anywhere from 12 hours to 36 hours to help clients declutter a garage, for example.

“It was so easy to close the door on clutter and try to ignore disorganized spaces, but now that you are stuck at home and facing it every single day, and you can’t close the door,” Fonseca said.

Fonseca suggests you also be mindful of the space you have when you choose your gym equipment and limit your purchases to what will fit.

“If your home gym is a small section in your living room, because you exercise on a bike while you’re watching TV, then only shop on the right size for that space,” she said.

Fitness enthusiast Jose Guevara, for example, started his home gym in a small area of his Georgia garage but soon realized it was too crowded to get a proper workout.

He cleared out his garage, a process that included him either throwing away, donating or selling items. Whatever he needed to keep went into the attic for storage.

Not everyone has the luxury of an attic or basement space for long-term storage. If that’s your scenario then you might want to consider renting a storage unit to store seasonal items or boxes. Our orange doors come in a variety of sizes to suit your needs.

Space-Saving Storage Tips for Home Workouts

As you build out your home gym, it’s helpful to group like items and equipment and to make sure everything has a storage space away from the center of the room. Because no one likes to kick their barbells when they walk across the room.

If it doesn’t have a place, then it becomes a trip hazard, Fonseca said.

If you plan to use a lot of weights, consider buying a tiered cart to store varying hand weights so they are off the floor like at a gym. Not only does it offer portability, but also you can choose options with wheels.

The vertical storage space allows you to organize your hand weights by size. Guevara, on the other hand, repurposed an old bookshelf by turning it sideways and mounting it on the wall of his home gym, aka garage, to organize smaller items.

Also consider using a basket to store items like a yoga mat or foam roller. This keeps your gear neatly organized and easily accessible.

“Baskets give the space some texture, and it’s motivating to have a nice space and not just a sweaty piece of furniture,” Fonseca said.

You can keep your resistance bands, on the other hand, organized by adding some hooks to your wall. If this setup is only temporary, you can use removable hooks.

Garage Home Gym Setup

Although Guevara had a two-car garage, which is ample for a home gym, he still needed to be able to park the cars inside. So he had to be really smart with his space!

He leveraged vertical space on the walls, plus even his ceiling, to pull his equipment off the floor. For him, the garage offered more of these storage options, which he documented on his website Shredded Dad.

“I only have one floor, but I have three walls. If I could get as much as I could on the walls, I knew I would have a lot of space,” he said.

He uses tire hangers screwed into the studs for heavy equipment. Each one can hold up to 100 pounds. He’s also bought an array of heavy-duty hooks.

He also found a weight rack and bench that both fold up and hang on the wall when he’s not working out.

He keeps his fitness bands organized on a belt and tie rack. All the hooks are great for storage as you can see in the photo above.

As for the ceiling, he used the space to attach gymnastics rings, and a climbing rope. He used the bracket of the garage door rail to attach a ceiling fan, above, in order to make the summer heat in Georgia a little more bearable.

Having these home gym organization tips has also been a time saver for this father of three.

“It’s so convenient to open the back door and I’m already there at the gym,” Guevara said. “I can go early in the morning or late at night.”

We also have tips if you need to move exercise equipment. If you’re moving to a new home, consider these stretching moves to ease the pain of relocating.