Welcome to challenge day 1! And while I gave a brief overview of this yesterday, the first day of this challenge is getting your gear, and tack room ready. Because if you have everything ready to go, you are setting yourself up for success.
So to kick off the August challenge, we are going to get organized, and make sure we have everything we need in the barn, and ready to go!
Getting Your Gear Ready
First things first, I am taking an inventory of everything I have, while I put it all away. Everything has a home in my tack room, which makes it a lot easier to find when I need it quickly. I think this also helps to train my brain into going from place to place to gather what I need in order to either get into the tack or just groom my horses.
But sometimes, I get busy. Or I have limited time to work with Plezant. So sometimes, everything doesn’t get put away. Which leads me to needing to get myself back on track, and put everything away. However, I can honestly say it is easier when everything has a home.
For example, my bridles, saddle pads, and saddles all have a permanent place to be when they are out in my barn.
And my grooming tote, and all of the extras that always live in the barn have a place to live as well. I find that by keeping everything hung up, or sitting where it is supposed to be sitting, it makes it easier to find everything when my time is limited.
Think about the last time you tacked up your horse for a ride. How long did it take you to get tacked up and into the saddle? If you had to hunt or search for things, my guess is it took a little bit of precious time away from riding. So the first step for this process is getting your gear to have a permanent place to live in your tack room.
Clean Tack is Happy Tack
And because I am going to be working with Plezant a lot over the next month, I want to start on a positive note, and that means cleaning my tack. For me, this is a fun task to do. I love cleaning my tack.
My go to leather cleaner is Effax Leder-Combi. It works fast and does a good job to clean my leather goods. It’s affordable to at around $20.00 for a 17 ounce bottle. And once the leather is clean, I make sure to protect it with Effax Leder-Balsam. A tub of 500 ml costs around $20.00 and Amazon has it with Prime shipping, so you can get it relatively quickly.
These two products make tack cleaning fun, and fast.
Clean Saddle Pads Too
When was the last time you washed your saddle pads? I try to wash mine after each use. And this can take a while for me because, well, I have a lot of saddle pads! Too many in fact. But when I am riding every day, it’s good to have a lot of pads!
So to get ready for this challenge, I make sure all my saddle pads are clean, and ready to be used.
Cleaning and Organizing the Tack Room
Now that all of my tack is clean, and everything has a home, all I have to do now is finish cleaning the tack room. All of the empties are thrown away. And a new “trash bag” (aka shavings bag) is ready for use.
I have washed and folded all of my barn towels, and my grooming kit has been cleaned out and put in it’s home. All of the bridles are assembled, and put away. As are all of my whips and crops. Everything is set for working with Plezant on a daily basis.
Getting Your Gear Ready
So that is it for day 1. No, I didn’t work with Plezant, sort of. He did get his regular grooming and fly spray treatment. But a little bit of planning on my part will make this challenge successful. And that is my goal. I want to start off on the right foot! So by getting my tack room clean, and organized I am doing just that.
And if you are wanting to watch the video that goes along with this blog post, you can watch it on my YouTube channel, or just click on the video below.
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