10 Genius Ideas for Securing Your Stuff While Your RV is in Motion
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The last thing you need while driving down the highway is to hear your dishes crashing in your kitchen! These ten ideas will keep your things secure so you can drive in peace.
How to keep your dishes from sliding around in the cabinet.
Grippy Shelf Liners
Lining your shelves and drawers with grippy shelf liners will help prevent dishes from sliding around while your RV is in motion. You can also cut it into circles or squares to place between metal pots and pans to prevent them from rattling.
- EXTRA STRONG GRIP NON-ADHESIVE LINER: non adhesive and tear resistant drawer liners are engineered with the highest quality materials to reduce slipping and bunching in your drawers or cabinet shelves; superior gripping technology keeps both the liner in place on surfaces
As a full-time RVer, I preferred to keep my glass dishes in my fifth wheel, including plates, bowls, and baking dishes. I used this method to store these dishes in my cabinets and have never had anything break!
Plate Racks
- Superior Material - Crafted from high-quality, environmentally-friendly bamboo and premium stainless steel 304, our product boasts exceptional durability. The newly enhanced 12mm bamboo board features a unique three-layer internal structure, effectively guarding against deformation and cracking. Built to last, it offers a long lifespan in everyday use.
If you have a lot of plates, you could use a plate rack to keep them neatly stacked, but the rubbery shelf liner should be enough.
Pegboard Kitchen Organizer
- Adaptable Storage And Organizing Solution: Peggy is designed to help you reclaim your most valuable kitchen storage space while at the same time keeping everything neatly organized
For pots and pans and other larger items in drawers or cabinets, the Peggy kitchen organizer is a neat solution. It’s a plastic peg board with adjustable rods that you can place wherever you need them.
If you’re handy with wood you could make something like this yourself by drilling holes in a piece of plywood and putting dowel rods in it.
How to prevent glass bottles and drinkware from rattling or breaking.
Liquor Bottle Sleeves
- KEEP IT SAFE: Keep your bottles safe while traveling or shipping by placing these mesh protective sleeves around your wine or liquor bottle which prevents them from banging against each other.
You’ll probably want to avoid glass as much as possible in your RV, but if you do have any bottles or condiments in glass containers, putting liquor bottle sleeves around them will cushion them and keep them from rattling as you bump along the road.
I’ve even used these sleeves to protect glassware! But if you travel often removing and replacing the liquor sleeves every time you use a dish might be too inconvenient.
However, if you’re a full-time RVer who tends to stay longer at each place, these can be a good way to keep you from having to replace your glassware.
If you ask at a local liquor store, the employees may have some they would be willing to give you, but they’re also pretty cheap to buy on Amazon.
Bottle Loft
For glass bottles in the fridge, here’s a nifty item a subscriber told me about. It’s called the Bottle Loft, and it’s a strip of very strong magnets that mounts to the roof of your fridge to hold bottles that have a metal top.
- US PATENT 9,920,877
How to keep items handy and accessible without having to pack and unpack them.
Adhesive or Magnetic Hooks
I love using hooks to hang items I grab frequently, such as pot holders and dish towels. (You can buy dish towels with loops or sew some loops on yours to keep them from falling off the hooks.) If your refrigerator doors are magnetic, you can use magnetic hooks to hang small items on the door.
Command hooks are very popular with a lot of RVers, but for walls, cabinets, and other areas where a hook could come in handy, I usually prefer to install something that looks more like what you would put in your home, such as mug hooks or a hook rack.
Just keep in mind that anything you hang on a hook will be swinging around while your RV is moving. If you have a motorhome, you may not want to hang anything that will make a lot of noise.
Hanging Baskets
Utilize vertical space in your RV for storage. Items in hanging baskets are handy to access and will stay in place while your RV is moving.
Amazon is my favorite place to shop for organizers for using vertical space.
How to protect house plants while you’re on the road.
If you’re like me and love being surrounded by plants, you have a few in your RV. The kitchen sink is a good place for these to go while you’re traveling.
Hanging Planters
You could also get some cute hanging planters that can be left in place while you’re traveling.
How to keep wall decor from falling or shifting.
Regardless of what method you use to hang wall decor, photos and other decorative items may fall down or move around.
Acrylic Mounting Tape
To keep this from happening, you can put a small amount of double-sided mounting tape on the back of your items to stick them to the wall and help hold them in place. I like clear acrylic mounting tape because it comes away cleanly when you remove it.
- XFasten Extreme Heavy Duty Mounting Tape is waterproof and can hold up to 5 lbs of mass per square inch of tape.
I added some acrylic mounting tape to the corners of the back of this over-door mirror to keep it from swinging around and possibly breaking.
How to keep decorative items in place while your RV is moving.
You can also use acrylic mounting tape to stick free-standing decorative items to shelves. Museum putty is another popular choice for this purpose. This way, you can enjoy leaving decorative items on display without having to take the time to pack them up on travel days.
How to be able to leave items on your shower shelves while traveling.
This is one of the biggest struggles for RVers!
It makes no sense to me that the corner shelves in my RV shower were open. Everything would fall before backing out of a campsite!
Plexiglass “Walls”
I fixed that by creating plexiglass “walls” for the shelves.
Tackle this project yourself:
You can follow along with my tutorial on how to build these plexiglass walls here.
How to avoid an avalanche when you open your cabinets.
It’s never fun to open a cabinet and be hit with an avalanche of stuff that shifted around during travel, or for all the items inside the cabinet to be a complete mess, like this:
No thank you.
Small Boxes
One way to keep that from happening is to store items in your cabinet in boxes, like reused cardboard shoe boxes or the plastic shoe boxes from Dollar Tree shown in the photo below.
Utensil Caddies
For narrow medicine cabinet shelves, utensil caddies are a good way to hold items in place.
Plexiglass Panels
Plexiglass panels can be added across the front of narrow shelves (use acrylic mounting tape to attach the plexiglass to the inside of the cabinet).
Tension Rods
Another idea that works really well for holding stuff in place on cabinet shelves is to put a small tension rod across each shelf. You can also buy double tension rods designed to go across the shelves in your RV refrigerator.
How to keep hanging clothing from falling in your closet.
If the clothes in your closet keep falling down, here are a couple of solutions to consider.
Ribbed Hosing
Cover your closet bar with a length of ribbed hosing. This will prevent the hangers from sliding along it. as you drive and can keep hangers from falling off.
Foam Insulation
Before you hit the road, cover your closet rod (and hangers) with a length of foam pipe insulation or a pool noodle. This will not only hold the hangers in place, but will also help them stay on the rod.
Replace Your Hangers
Buy hangers with a ring that goes around the rod, like what you find in hotel closets.
- Anti Theft - Excellent retail and hotel clothes hangers, the no hook design means the hangers will not be taken home by customers and guests, meaning no costly replacements or waste!
Be sure to look for the type that allows the hanger to be removed from the ring, for ease of use. You could add these rubber grips to the shoulders to help keep clothes from sliding off them.
- Sufficient quantity: you will receive one package including 200 pieces of hanger grips for wood hangers, the quantity is sufficient to meet your daily use and replacement
How to keep free-standing furniture and appliances from sliding or tipping over
Bungee Cords
If you’ve replaced your RV furniture or added additional items, you’ll need a way to secure everything while you’re traveling. Bungee cords and ratchet straps are both great for this purpose. Small bungee cords can also be used to hold a countertop appliance in place.
D-Rings
Along with bungee cords or ratchet straps, you can install some additional D-rings. Screw them to your floor or a solid wood surface such as the trim of a slideout.
- 12 Pack high quality D ring tie down with mounting brackets, made by heavy duty solid steel, enough strong and durable, load up to 1,200 lbs per D-Ring
How to Keep Cabinet Doors and Drawers from Flying Open
After purchasing a motorhome with cabinets that don’t stay latched, I know personally how frustrating this can be!
Most RV cabinets and drawers have latches to help them stay closed during travel, but sometimes these latches are made from plastic that breaks or doesn’t work well. You can purchase new latches to replace the broken or defective plastic ones.
Velcro
- SCHOOL SUPPLIES FOR TEACHERS AND EDUCATORS - Numerous applications to keep the classroom tidy - fasten items to desks and folders, stick nametags to back the back of chairs. Adhere your whiteboard erasers and markers to the board with our sticky back tape
But if you’re in the middle of a trip and need a quick fix in the meantime, pick up some of these Velcro squares. You can get them at Walmart or on Amazon. They work great for holding an RV cabinet closed when you don’t want it flying open!
What other ideas have you thought of?
Hopefully these ideas will help make your travel days a little more efficient! Have you come up with any other great ideas for securing your stuff to keep it from shifting or rattling while you’re driving? Leave a comment to let me know!
Ashley Mann spent three years living full time in a 38-foot, 5th-wheel RV with her husband Josiah and their cat, Kitty. Her favorite thing about RV life is the challenge of finding the perfect way to organize a space, and she loves seeing all the creative and clever ways people come up with to customize their RVs.
I do not full time anymore, but these are good ideas. I like to use empty six pack cardboard holders to separate my glass bottles. Also, cozies are good and you can cut out the bottoms and slip them up the glass.
Those are great ideas!
I converted my closet into a pantry by putting in shoe organizers and putting frequently used food items in the pockets. They don’t fall over or out of the cupboard while moving and food items are easy to see and organize.
When I travel, I fill the si k with things that sit on my kitchen counter so I don’t move my plants. Instead, I use a theraband to tie them to the window. I use them fir exercise, so I already have one with both ends tied in loops that fits over the knob of the window. In my bedroom, the window is an emergency exit that has a bar Instead of a knob and it’s very easy to tie plants down. My herbs and flower pots ride on the floor behind the passenger seat.
I’ve tried book ends for my books and folders, but they fly all over the place during travel…..any good ideas?
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I would recommend using baskets or cube storage bins that fit on your shelves! 🙂
How about heavier objects on galley counter, like a toaster oven? I used to be able to find an adhesive clamppy thing that attached to the counter surface and the toaster oven then each secured to the other. Made of plastic but very strong. Are they still available?
To keep clothes from falling off hangers, wrap a rubber band or two around the ends of the hanger.
I am currently working on finishing my campervan build. To secure items on narrow shelves in the kitchen area so they don’t fall out and hit me on the head when I open the door after traveling,, I am planning to purchase elastic bungee cord by the foot. I plan to run it across the cabinets in front of the items, but behind the doors if that makes sense.