The Beast in the Basement

The sports-minded Love family of Marshfield, Mass., tries to keep their basement organized by season, with one corner designated for winter (snowboards, snowshoes) and another for fall (shin guards, cleats, orange cones). But five sets of golf clubs, two bicycles and two kayaks have spread from the basement to the garage and out into the backyard.

As anyone who's ever opened a closet door only to be crowned with a tennis racket knows, there's a price to pay for cramming too much sports gear into too little space. To help, manufacturers offer a wide array of bins, racks and other products to organize the clutter, some of them sport-specific. "When you buy dishes, you know what cabinet you'll put them in," says Standolyn Robertson, president of the National Association of Professional Organizers. "It should be the same for sports gear."

There are systems designed for the specialized gear used in most conceivable sports, from in-line skates to fishing rods. Sport-specific hook-and-rack combinations, sold by Sportstorage.com, attach to walls to keep bikes, clubs, sticks, rackets and balls off the garage or basement floor. Other products are generalists: The $185 Gearstash 5.0 is a wall-mounted sheet of heavyweight fabric with a lot of mesh bags, webbing loops and J hooks. It can hold up to 600 pounds of everything from skis and climbing equipment to scuba gear, paddles and fishing poles.

Sales are strong in bike storage equipment, organizer companies say. The Cezanne Sports and Bike Gear Storage Rack ($199.99) looks like a frail version of what bellmen use to move suitcases, but it holds up to four bikes. At Organize-It, a Detroit store and Web site, the Hoist Monster Bike Storage Rack (on sale for $29.99) has cracked the top 100 items, in terms of units sold; other offerings include a Wall Mount Sports Gear Rack ($41.99) and the Big Mesh Sports Basket ($45.95).

But some retailers say they aren't connecting with the sports storage customer. According to the national retail chain Dick's Sporting Goods, demand for organizers is so low that practically none of its 340 stores stocks any, despite an average of 50,000 to 80,000 square feet and tens of thousands of items per store. The company's Web site lists a $19.97 Sport Rack Organizer and a $99 Sports Ball Locker.

A spokesman for Organize-It says systems to store gear smaller than a bicycle -- such as the Double Ski Rack ($15.99) and the Tennis Storage Rack ($19.99) -- don't sell anywhere near as well as the Monster Hoist. "People don't use racks because it is easier to just stuff the gear in a duffel bag or the corner of the garage," he says.

As long as the pile of equipment remains out of sight, most people don't feel an urgent need to sort it all out, says Dawn Helgesen-Miller, a professional organizer based in Denver and owner of Less-Mess-Less-Stress. "It isn't at the top of the list of things that drive them crazy, so they put off dealing with it."

Part of the problem is that organizers can be difficult to assemble. And a lot of people simply don't know about them. Tom Stoudt, a 37-year-old political pollster outside Philadelphia, says he would have bought some if he'd known they existed. Instead, his method for storing sports gear boils down to "the basement, the basement, the basement." That's where all 10 of his hockey sticks reside, leaning against walls along with his skis from the 1980s, his wife's field hockey stick that hasn't been used in eight years and various golf clubs and ice skates. "We put it all there to get it out of the way," he says, "but now out of the way is becoming more in the way."

Stuffing gear into duffel bags and closets has drawbacks. It can be hard to remember where anything is. And some items become unpleasant if they are stored while covered in dust or sweat that never fully dries.

David Clarke, a 23-year-old New York banker, stores his hockey gear in a big plastic bin that he got at Home Depot. But the equipment doesn't air out well in there. It smells "worse than the trash," he says. For a while he's had his eye on a hockey tree -- a metal rack that looks a little like a scarecrow when draped with equipment and clothes. Still, he hasn't gotten around to buying it. "I just think about it," he says.

You can't force people to organize, notes Ms. Robertson, the president of the organizers association. She counsels people to at least come up with an exit strategy -- a place where the equipment can go when it has outlived its purpose.

One option is to sell it. Consumers bought $1.01 billion in used sports equipment in 2006, according to the National Sporting Goods Association -- an increase of more than 14% over 2005 and the first time purchases exceeded the $1 billion mark in the nine years the study has been done. The Bureau of Labor Statistics' consumer price index for sporting goods fell 1% in October compared with a year earlier, while declining an average of 1.3% for all of 2006.

Where people go to buy used sports gear depends on the sport. For example, 85% of used metal baseball bats are sold in stores, while 94% of used fishing rod-and-reel combos are sold by individuals, either on Web sites like eBay or Craigslist or at venues such as garage sales, according to the NSGA.

Play It Again Sports, a new-and-used sporting goods empire with 388 outlets in North America, will buy anything from used treadmills to worn cleats. Director Pat Quinn says demand for the used stuff far outpaces demand for the new. Stores constantly run out of used items. "We can't find enough to sell," he says. Despite television, Web and newspaper ads, "people just don't think to bring it in."

A baseball bat that would sell new for $100 sells for about $50 at Play It Again Sports; the customer who brought the bat in would get $15 or $20. In the case of a $1,000 treadmill, the item might sell for $500 to $600 used; the store pays as little as $150.

Fitness equipment is the most popular type of used gear at Play It Again Sports. Many people buy treadmills and never use them at all, leaving them in the basement to collect dust: These are called "barely used." And the stores now offer free pick-up of fitness equipment, since hauling a 300-pound machine may make any redemption price too low.

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