I have three horses and they each have blankets. . . . probably four of five for each of them. We just moved and there are no blanket bars on the stall doors or in the tackroom. In our previous place my barn was very small and I just hung them on a rail that we hung up at the back of the aisle. (it was a 2-stall barn with a short aisle in between.) But they still got pretty jumbled.
Do we like the hanging blanket racks, or just stuffing them onto bars on stall fronts or. . .? What i your favorite way of organizing multiple blankets? Thanks!
Where I board there arenât blanket bars either. We bought a few blanket bars that fit over the tops of the doors (Dutch doors) and we can hang a blanket or a sheet or two on that. Theyâre maybe $20 or so.
We also keep a clean blanket in a bag in each vehicle as a spare. Weâre at the barn every single day barring travel and bad weather/roads.
The tack room has shelving that we can also stack blanket bags on. Not our whole collection, but enough space for 3-4 of them.
At Blanket HQ (aka our garage) we got some industrial plastic shelving units and the blankets (clean and bagged) go there. When I say our blanket hoard is out of control for two horses, Iâm not kidding.
The $20 adjustable and removable blanket bar is where I would start. Cheap and easy 
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I hate blanket bars on/near stall fronts, personally. Iâve seen more than one horse break their jaw on them and I think theyâre messy. I prefer to have a trunk to keep blankets in and a hook out of the way somewhere, like in an extra stall or near a wash rack or something to hang wet blankets up to dry.
Depending on your set up and how many blankets, you could have a trunk per horse or a trunk for sheets, trunk for mediums, etc
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I have three horses that have decent wardrobes, I use the hooks from hardware store. Each horse has 3 hooks for blankets. One of my goals it to make wardrobe hanger out of black pipe to hang blankets. But there hooks work really well for now.
https://www.homedepot.com/p/Everbilt-4-in-Handy-Hook-Wall-Mounted-J-Hook-25-lbs-01209/202305424
I agree blanket bars in the aisle take up real estate (no experience with injuries from them).
If used, thatâs good for a single blanket & maybe a sheet before it gets bulky.
Is there room in the tackroom for a rubbermaid-type tote?
Thatâs what I use for my admittedly micro-collection (1 midweight apiece for horse, pony & mini) of blankets.
I kept clean blankets folded, in the zippered bags they came in, in the tote, until those bags fell apart. Now blankets are folded & stacked in the tote.
You s/b able to fit at least 2 horse-sized blankets in a single tote. Totes & the lids come in different colors, so youâd know whose were in which.
One place I boarded had this in the tackroom & it was very handy:
We have something similar to the one 2DogsFarm linked. It has âarmsâ in all 10 spots, and somehow or another they all have something hanging on them; winter turnouts, fly sheets, a fleece cooler or two . . . This for 4 critters 
It is mounted in an out-of-the-way corner of the barn, and it pretty well uses up that corner, too.
Likes: Other than the inevitable dust, it does a good job of keeping things clean and organized.
Donât likes: It has to be mounted pretty high to keep the turnouts from dragging on the floor; high enough that we need to keep a bucket over there to be able to reach the top of the arms to load/unload blankets.
Suggestions: I put a steel âeyeâ in the wall, and use a bungie cord to keep the contents, not really compressed, but gathered up against that wall. This reduced the occupied footprint by about half.
Lacking funding, or space for something like that, consider getting a Steel trashcan for your turnouts. Just be sure they are dry before stowing them. One of the larger cans (30gal ?) will hold two, maybe three âheavy-weightâ turnouts, will keep them clean, and will also keep the rodents away.
In Winter, when the turnouts are often on and off daily, I mostly just toss the blankets over a corral panel, and do up a couple of the straps to keep the wind and Equines from dumping them on the ground. A bonus is that (at least in Colorado) the winter sun will usually dry damp/muddy/icy turnouts in a day âon the railâ. And they are handy when the time comes to re-install them.
"Blankies on; blankies off, repeat as necessary.
(edit to add) Since I have seen this question come up over and over, "Yes, given a good breathable winter turnout (We use the Weatherbeeta âDetach-a-neckâ, âHeavy-weightâ. It gets Cold at night here, and it can go from sunny and pleasant to Blizzard in the wink of an eye. Why mess with anything less than Max-Warm?), you can toss it right on a wet, snowy, shivering animal, and in a short while they will be warm and mostly dry underneath. They will dry off even if the blanket is accumulating snow on the topside.
It speeds things up a bit if you first squeegee off most of the excess snow/ice/water from their back, but ya ainât gotta, and it will still warm them right up. My kids just love their blankies.
We only blanket the old horse, but I have enough âcoversâ to do all nine horses if needed. I have been storing them in the big, rolling trash cans. It keeps the sizes together, clean, out of the way, easy to move can around, holds at least 7 blankets plus some rainsheets. The horses seem to all fit 81-82" or 84-86" blankets so I only need a couple of cans. I have some in the nice plastic bags, but most heavyweights were purchased used at great savings. Those get wrapped with straps to stay contained, easy to handle during storage.
I have no tackroom or barn wall space for shelves. Trunks are full of harness and saddle pads/blankets.
The old horse will have 3 blankets, various waterproof weights out, to put on each morning depending on expected temps and weather. They hang on blanket âarmsâ on the top edge of the tack room. Out of the way, yet getting a breeze with open barn doors to dry them off. Any very wet horses get cooler layers put on to dry them off, takes about an hour. Then damp coolers are removed and hung to dry on the blanket bars by the tack room. We have a small step stool to hang blankets high enough to not drag on the floor.
All horses are stalled inside at night, usually have no blankets unless way down below zero, which is not often any more. They are unclipped, to fluff or flatten hair as needed, even the old guy. His covers are for the wind protection outside.
I have nothing hanging on stall doors because we use the aisle so much. Too easy to catch on things intruding out into aisle space as tractor/spreader, horse or horses and carriage go by.
I have portable tack hangers, the kind you can hang anywhere. I use those hung up on something high enough, and I hang my blankets from those as needed during the winter. Itâs not ideal really as the blanket isnât spread out enough for easy drying if itâs wet, but it works. I have limited space, best I could come up with.
My daughter took her horse to college this year, and the retiree is moving to a barn that has open shelving in the feed room for blankets. I bought two of these in the largest size, and can fit a sheet, medium, heavy, and light stable in each. My horses are small (69-74) so larger blankets may fit fewer. They seem well made and will keep the dust off, and hopefully keep the blankets from creeping up space. Damp/wet blankets get hung on a hook or stall front to dry as best as possible.
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I put my cleaned blankets in garbage bags, then into a plastic tote. One suggestion is to put in a container of "DampRid"with whatever is in the container (remember it is there so you can take it out before you move the container). DampRid will keep everything nice and fresh. I had trouble with my Drover Rain Coat in the horse trailer turning green in the tote where I keep âriding clothes I might needâ --DampRid cleared up that problem.
There are six horses on our property and not much real estate in the standing buildings for each horseâs blankets â of which there are four: rainsheet, 100g, mid-weight and âspareâ.
I bought a 5 tier shelf from Home Depot, and labeled each shelf with the corresponding weights. Then put cow tags on the blankets so itâs obvious too. Each blanket gets folded after use and put in its prospective shelf. Keeps things nice and tidy and doesnât eat too much of the limited space in my tack shed.
I just strung up twine between the stud posts in my barn and hang the blankets on those. Super cheap and the original twine has lasted 10 years so far.
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I have 8-10 horses at any given time, and most of them have a waterproof turnout sheet and a medium weight turnout blanket. A few horses also have a lightweight (100g). Iâm a hunter princess and like everything matchy-matchy. Each wardrobe item has a round brass tag with the horseâs name on it clipped to a front buckle. Blanket bars outside each stall have enough room for two wardrobe items to be folded and hung next to one another. In winter, the horses are generally in their mediums 90% of the time, but if they get wet/gross, I hose off and hang on a series of brass hooks up along one side of the wash/grooming area. They can dry there right into the drain. If I have a horse that will pull items off the blanket bar to play with, their blankets are just kept on those wash stall hooks. In the spring, I have all blankets items commercially cleaned, repaired, and rewaterproofed, and then folded/stored neatly in giant Sterlite plastic bins. Each horse has its own bin, labeled (w/ label maker) with their name and an itemized list of their clothing in the box. Cleaned/repaired blankets are kept in there 3 seasons, and I usually also have an extra turnout blanket in there as well as stable sheets or blankets the horses use at shows. The bins stack and so donât take that much room to store in an extra stall, attic, or corner of the feedroom. Since everything is labeled with content, itâs easy to quickly and easily find what I need.
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I feel like thereâs 2 different storage needs - one for clean blanket storage during the summer and one for easy access storage when actively using blankets.
For âlong-termâ storage or summer storage, I fold clean blankets and put each one in a white garbage bag, label the bag, then put them in the blanket bags they came in. I have a lot of Rambos so those blanket bags last longer. Then they get stuffed into rubbermaid bins/totes with lids and if Iâm organized, I group by weight and label the bins.
For easy access storage during blanketing season, I like the 3-4 arm blanket bars so that dirty or wet blankets arenât getting folded. I have large blankets (84/87) and I do need a stool to hang the blankets on the bars, which are high enough the tail flaps just touch the ground.
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