Pro Tips for storage of your equipment and travelling in your Motorhome

My tips on how best to pack what you need while you're away, and to get from A to B with everything intact

by Julie Wills

As you get to know your vehicle, both for driving and for living in, you will evolve your own routines, but as you're getting started it can be helpful to take tips from others. As with almost everything to do with motorhoming, some things that other people do will work for you, and others won't.

Don't feel that you have to do things the same way as anyone else. Just like choosing your motorhome in the first place, the things that works for some won't work for others. As always, feel free to ask for advice, but don't feel obliged to take it!

Storage

Everybody will have different requirements, and different storage spaces, depending on the size, design and layout of your Motorhome and what you use it for. Some Motorhomes will have a garage (sizes vary); some will have a tiny "boot" space; some won't have any storage accessible from outside at all (with the possible exception of a gas bottle cupboard and the toilet cassette door).

Internally, many will have wardrobes, although in some, people may have removed the hanging space and fitted shelves instead. That may work best for you, or you may prefer hanging space. Personally, I prefer to have some hanging space (especially for coats, or when we're transporting our costumes for Steampunk events), but as with everything, adapt the space available to work in the best way for you.

Provision for safe storage of crockery without rattles varies greatly from one Motorhome builder to another.

All of this means that you have to adapt what you carry, and how and where you carry it, to fit the space available. This is definitely a situation where the old adage holds true: "A space for everything, and everything in its space".

General safety

Try to store heavy things as low down in the vehicle as possible, with lightweight things in overhead lockers or over the cab. That way you not only help to keep the centre of gravity low, which is good for general safety, especially when driving, but you also reduce the risk of being injured by anything heavy falling on you when you open a locker door.

It's also very important that nothing is left loose which could fly through the vehicle and injure somebody or cause damage if you have to brake suddenly or have an accident. A cushion hitting somebody in the back of the head is likely to have a very different outcome from a crate full of tinned food hitting someone.

If you're carrying something that you can't put in a locker or cupboard, makes sure that it's securely safely so that it can't move. Don't rely on heavy things staying put on the floor in the gangway. In an accident, you can't rely on them staying there.

Rattles

Even the newest motorhome will almost certainly have some rattles. With so much functionality and equipment crammed into a moving vehicle, it's pretty inevitable.

One lovely comment that I once saw was from somebody who said they treat the rattles as the happy background accompaniment to going away on their travels, which I thought was a wonderful attitude to take.

Having said that, you do want to make sure that you store things in a way that keeps them safe, and makes them as easy as possible to get to when you need them. And, of course, you need to consider the safety of the people travelling in the vehicle as well as other road users.

There will also be some rattles that are downright annoying. There will be more information on dealing with them coming soon.

For rattles that you don't fix permanently (i.e. for contents that rattle, rather than doors, partition or blinds that rattle), an assortment of tea towels, flat "oven gloves", pot stands or dishcloths can be interleaved with other solid items so that they can't rattle against each other.

Some people use bubble wrap, but I prefer to use something that has other uses too, once you arrive at your destination.

A fabric flat oven glove / pot stand

A selection of different brands of silicone pot stands / oven gloves

Baskets and Containers

We have accumulated quite a collection of different lightweight baskets over our many years as Motorhome owners, as you'll see in the photos below. They can be really useful to be able to easily get at everything right at the back of an overhead locker, or just to divide the space up to stop things sliding around and hiding behind each other.

With a bit of forward planning, you can pick these up cheaply in pound shops, etc. Measure all your lockers, taking into account the fact that almost nothing will be vertical - the backs and/or fronts of lockers will almost certainly slope - and probably in the opposite direction to the baskets, and you also need to allow for any catches that intrude into the space. It's no good having a container that's the perfect size for a space if you can't get it in and out of it past the door catch!

If you keep a notebook with all the measurements in, you'll be able to spot perfect bargains, and reject things that won't fit. I prefer to keep photographs and electronic notes, so that I can always access them on my phone and I can also share the notes with my partner - but use whatever works for you. Just make sure you always have your list with you.

Don't forget that if a shelf is not quite wide enough for two baskets, just having one will help to subdivide the space up anyway.

IKEA Gles boxes (604.292.87 - £1) fit the cupboard under our sink perfectly, and are great for tins and other dry foods, and for our kettle and washing up equipment.

Lightweight baskets (probably from a £1 shop or similar) allow locker space to be used effectively. Just one on the top shelf helps to divide the space usefully.

The rest of this particular locker gets filled with packing cubes containing clothes when we go away (see below).

I think this basket is supposed to be for (household) fridges, but it's a great fit for one of our lockers. Even the handle fits the locker perfectly (see the photo further down the page).

Our "spares and small equipment" locker. The baskets have stuff in them, but also act as dividers for the other shelf contents.

Our Games and First Aid locker. Note the Quarto game box underneath one of the baskets on the bottom shelf - otherwise the tops of them are just too wide to fit two on the shelf side by side.

Crockery and cooking equipment

Your main aim here will be to prevent rattles and breakages, and for safety.

Fitted crockery storage

In general, I have found Autosleeper Campervans and Motorhomes to have excellent provision for storing crockery, which can rather spoil you for other makes. In fact, the crockery supplied in older Autosleepers was a very recognisable set of standard household pottery plates and bowls that you could buy in any homeware department at the time. Their key to their success is a combination of a false floor with shaped holes into which you slot the plates and bowls, combined with velcro straps and U-shaped bars to hold it all tightly in place.

Part of an empty subdivided crockery locker.
I've attached a bit of non-slip matting at the back for extra protection and rattle prevention. There's no need to attach it at the bottom, the plates will hold it in place.

The same Autosleeper crockery locker with plates and bowls strapped tightly in place.

If your own Motorhome doesn't have good crockery storage provision, and the lips of your lockers are deep enough, you could make your own false shelf with some plywood. Screw the bottom of the velcro strap to the real locker floor, using a washer so the velcro can't rip around the screw head, and sit the false floor on a leg in each corner. Small rubber door stops could make good legs for this.

Make a cardboard template first, to get the fit right, and to make sure that your crockery will fit your slots. They only need a fairly gentle curve.

The layout of the one below was excellent (much better than the subdivided on in the pictures on the left). Dinner and side plates on the left, bowls on the right, plus holes with handle cutouts for mugs.

Non-fitted crockery storage

If DIY is not your thing, you'll find lots of other ways to keep your crockery safe. Remember that you don't actually need soft things around crockery to protect it or stop it rattling, as long as things can't move relative to each other.

IKEA's Variera range includes adjustable plate rack stands in two different size ranges. You can adjust these to fit snugly, which will keep the plates safe, but you might want to add something else to help stop rattles.

IKEA Variera plate holders with two sizes of base.

Part numbers 003.846.92 and 303.846.95. £4 and £5, respectively (April 2021)

The adjustment underneath has a thumbwheel and a shallow U-shaped clasp that slots into the grooves to hold the arms in place

The larger size with dinner plates in it

For extra security and rattle-proofing, you can add bungees, velcro straps, tea-towels, square oven gloves / pot stands. Because the base is raised a little, you can wrap things underneath it without making the whole thing unstable.

Strapped in with elastic bungee cord. Simple but effective - and quick.

Held tight by a velcro strap (this is velcro which has hooks on one side and loops on the other, so it sticks to itself. This particular application can be tricky to get tight enough though, as you're trying to pull tight sideways, around the plates, whilst sticking the straps together vertically on top of them. It would be easier with the plates upside down though!

Just two tea towels wrapped folded over the 2nd and 5th plate of 6, and with the corners tucked over plate 3 (and 6) protects them all.

Plates separated by flat fabric oven "gloves". Silicone pot stands would do the same job.

Here are our plates in an IKEA plate rack, plus a basket full of larger oven gloves and tea towels all in a slim locker. (In this case, it's over the cab, and right next to the main kitchen lockers.)

The basket on the right (also pictured above) is the perfect size to fit the remaining space. The handle sits just above the lip of the locker, but doesn't get in the way of the door closing. If it had been made to measure it couldn't have been a better fit!

Anther option - especially as you're getting to know your home-from-home - is to pack your crockery from home, with or without tea towels, etc., in whatever size of crate or box you can find to fit in the lockers that you have available.

Cutlery

Most motorhomes will have a sectioned cutlery drawer (our first two ancient Panel Van Conversions didn't - but more on that to come elsewhere). We line each of the sections with non-slip matting (which is available in various colours), and don't worry about the rest of the rattles - they're minor, and muffled enough behind the drawer front not to bother us. But if they bother you, you can apply the same arsenal of tea towels or dishcloths to wrap them in. Personally, I can't be bothered unwrapping everything on arrival, and wrapping it up again before setting off again. Life's too short ... and rattles are the happy soundtrack, remember.

Cooking equipment

You may want to move grill pans and racks, etc. out of the grill and put them somewhere where they can't rattle around. This is another area where tea towels are your friend.

You can buy stacking camping saucepans with removable handles (for a price), but I use a 40 year old pair of small non-stick saucepans from a set of 4 by Swan. The larger one has a lid, which sits neatly upside down on the larger saucepan, and is the right size to "cradle" the smaller one. Here, the lid is has a tea towel folded around it, just because these are in an overcab side locker, right over the passenger's head, but in rear kitchen layout, we stored them in a little locker under the over and didn't bother padding them.

The basket next to it contains a selection of small tupperware-style boxes, some food bags and bag clips for miscellaneous food storage (e.g. tomorrow's bacon from a large pack).

Clothing

Packing cubes are great for clothing that you don't hang up in the wardrobe (assuming you have a wardrobe). These are soft fabric "boxes" that you can roll or fold smaller items into, to keep them all together. You can get them in lots of different places, and there are lots of different brands. I have some from IKEA (the grey one in the picture), plus a number of different brands that I've bought online.

People have different approaches for using them. Some people colour code them per-person. Our approach is that each person has their own overhead locker (or lockers), and can use those for storing whatever personal items they want to have in the MoHo. One advantage of this is that it makes it easy to enforce a policy of "if it won't fit in your locker, you can't take it with you".

I then colour and size-code them according to contents - e.g. a small one for underwear, a larger one for t-shirts and tops, and perhaps another for leggings and jumpers or sweatshirts - it all depends on the time of year and what clothing I expect to need.

Another option is to use resealable plastic bags, which you can compress the air out of (you can do it by just pressing down firmly, or rolling the bag with contents; you don't need a vaccum cleaner). Again, IKEA's Istad range have a double seal and are quite robust.

A selection of different brands and sizes of packing cubes. There are socks in the bottom left one and a folded t-shirt in the bottom right one.

Bikes and outdoor equipment

What if you don't have a garage, or a bike rack or roof rack?

If you don't have any external carrying space for outdoor equipment, the obvious place to put it (for safety when travelling) is in the washroom. That way, even in an accident, it can't injure the occupants of the vehicle.

However, if you're storing things on the shower tray, it's really important that you spread the load, otherwise you risk damaging it. A shower tray is obviously designed to bear the weight of a human being, but the weight of a person is spread reasonably well, and feet don't tend to have sharp edges. You wouldn't want to wear stiletto heels in your washroom though!

What will damage it is not weight, but point pressure. Sharp corners, or something heavy that rests on a point or a small area will almost certainly do damage, so you need to take steps to spread the load, and to prevent sharp corners coming into contact with the tray. Everything we store in our washroom has a broad base, and the tray itself is also protected by the shaped carpet that came with the MoHo.

Depending on what you're transporting, you can gently wedge it so that it can't move around, or use bungee cords to straps things to each other, and/or to a securely fixed towel rail. Once you arrive, they can move outdoors, or to an awning, or a small tent. We have a little pop-up toilet tent, which is our mobile "shed". We mostly just use this if we take a bike, which is too big to keep indoors when you want to move around and use the washroom.

In our second Motorhome, a previous owner had created a made-to-measure chipboard platform will small "runners" as legs that sat over the bench-style cassette toilet. This was used to carry equipment without scratching or denting the toilet seat lid. In one of ours that had a bench cassette toilet, we had a small plastic bowl from a children's set which we placed upside down as a safety cover over the large push-down flush button ... after an incident where we accidentally stood our hosepipe on it after filling up the freshwater tank, and covered the washroom floor and everything in it with toilet chemicals. I've had better starts to a holiday!

A Brompton folding bike in its black cover with red trim (left), two camp chairs (black, and red, in the foreground) and a popup toilet tent (beige - slotted to the right of the toilet) fit snugly in the washroom when travelling.

Hanging above is a white mesh "toy storage" bag, which we use for dirty washing.

The camp chairs and toilet tent in use.

If we don't have the bike and aren't using the "shed", the camp chairs can move to the driver's seat out of the way when parked up, if it's wet outside.

Pets

Safety, your pet's comfort, and the law (info to be added!)

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