Cob Jockey

A few days ago, I was chatting with a few bloggers when someone asked what the best way to store saddle pads is.  Now, I love organization:

Old pic, but it's all I got.  This has...evolved...since this photo was taken haha

But I don't really have a good answer for saddle pads at the barn, and twice recently I've gone out to ride and realized all my pads were at home.

At home I keep them in the laundry room/former kitchen in this weirdly extended set of cabinets, which is the perfect size for saddle pads.

Our barn doesn't have a ton of storage, so I keep overflow tack in my trailer, meaning anything other than the saddle pad I'm currently using needs to go in there.  My trailer tack room is very small, so if they're going in there, they need to hang on the wall. So I thought, why not try a skirt hanger?

$3.88 at Walmart

It worked great!  It has six positions but this cheap Walmart version isn't really designed for the weight of a saddle pad, so I started with three:

Putting that new tie ring to work!

When I went to hang it, I just folded the top three positions and the hanger back and hung it by some gridwall hooks:






The hooks are stronger than the hanger, and they're deeper, so it has a better shot at staying on the gridwall and not bouncing off the wall when I hit a pothole.

We'll see how it works as I do my first hauls this year.  Anyone else have any good saddle pad storage ideas?

With the clinic coming up on Tuesday, I spent the entire day Saturday at the barn, first for a lesson and then to get a few odds and ends taken care of:

1. Finished mounting the panel the fan is hanging on in the below photo.  It's been partially complete since I put it up in October.


Not shown: added a foam bumper to the upper left corner of the chair rack so it wouldn't scratch the wall anymore.  Not noticeable: did some massive rearranging on the main wall.  I had some refining to do on my setup after living with it for six months.


2. Installed pipe insulation on the bottom of the swinging door to keep shavings out of the tack room.  Seriously could not have been cheaper.  $5 for two 6 ft sections of this stuff from Lowes, and it comes pre-sliced with adhesive on both sides.

For January-June's review, click here.

Connor got his first real injury days before Pony Cup, because of course he did.  He got his permanent pony card at a surprising 14.1hh, and we had an absolute blast at NDPC, where we also met Katlyn and Emilie, and Connor met his sister for the first time.  NK gave me some tough love in a lesson, and we survived 2-1 at a schooling show with a 60.000%.  I finally pulled the trigger on a PS of Sweden bridle, and JenJ introduced me to Franklin Balls. I also continued to wax poetic about how much better my life got after I moved Connor.

Still the straightest canter stride this horse has ever taken in his life.

My trainer moved her program from my old barn to my new barn.  I had kind of mixed feelings about this after I realized that I made a lot of progress when I started riding more outside of lessons.  Things were just good, every ride left me with a huge smile on my face.  NK fixed my leg aids in a lesson and I did a side-by-side comparison of my scores from the same test at the same show two days in a row.

We also photographed someone that's not for sale!

As I said in yesterday's post, the idea of hanging things in the trailer was intimidating to me after I failed to mount things in the KB's steel studs. Luckily, the Shadow's aluminum studs turned out to be much easier to mount things in.  

Regular old drill bits, cordless drill, tape measure, Sharpie, drive bits.  A mounting bracket is in the middle of the photo.

I didn't trust this mark.

When I got the 1 horse slant with it's smaller dressing room, I knew I would have to get smart about organization.  I've noticed that my stress level about showing goes way down when I'm organized, so I put a lot of effort into making sure things are easily accessible.

I've always liked the idea of The Organized Barn and Trailer's HOSS system, but was intimidated by the idea of hanging things in metal studs.  I tried once to drill into the steel studs in the KB and I failed.

Ended up using industrial strength Velcro instead, which worked fine, but had a 10lb max limit.  Wanted to make a post about this and didn't, oh well.

I was determined to mount things on the wall in the Shadow.  Luckily, aluminum is much easier to drill into than steel.  This is what it looked like when I got it:



This is what it looks like now:


I did some price comparisons with other non-horse specific gridwall kits, and honestly, TOBT was competitive on price.  They are also a really friendly small horsey business willing to go the extra mile to help you out, and I always like to vote with my dollar to support places like that.  I started with their Trailer Dressing Room Kit.




Mounting it was so much easier than I thought it would be; I'll do a separate how-to in another post.

Halfway done mounting the first gridwall.

Once I had the first kit installed and I saw what more I still needed to get off the ground, I placed a second order, this time for piecemeal parts instead of a kit.  The day after I placed this order, I got this email from Sue at The Organized Barn:


How awesome is that?  They totally could've pocketed that $62 and I wouldn't have known, but instead they refunded it back to my card.  AMAZING customer service!

I used a 1x4 gridwall and a double hook to hang my folding muck cart above the spare tire on one front wall (I had a tub, but it takes up too much room in the new dressing room, so it had to go).


I used the other 1x4 to mount my fan and a couple of other things:

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Never been one to spend money on something like a fan holder when bungee cords and twine works just fine at shows, but I wanted to be able to mount it for storage here, and this was the most secure option.

The new 3x4 gridwall went beside the first one for a total of 24 square feet of hanging space on the divider alone.

Gotta figure out something to keep those buckets from banging around in transit.  Backpack mounted high enough that I can use it open or closed in here.

There are still a couple more square feet I could cover with gridwall (ha), but all my stuff is off the ground and easily accessible, so I think I'm done.  Probably.  Except for a couple more hooks, a shelf and a blanket bar.  (I might have a problem.)

This wasn't a horse trailer, but it can happen to any trailer.  I could feel the heat from this as I passed in the left lane a few years ago.

Price: Varies.  Shipping is EXPENSIVE, prepare yourselves, but they do what they can to price shop and get it as low as possible.

Legal stuff: I bought all this with my own money (gulp), and was not influenced or compensated by TOBT.  All opinions are my own.