How Can I get the tack room clean! Help!

So I'm going to be taking over the beginner lesson program at my barn (totally awesome!) and I would like to work on getting the tack room, office etc. cleaned up! Well the tack room is a Mess! I don't think its been cleaned and sorted since carol bought the farm in 1994. Theres tons of stuff that doesnt belong to anyone that needs to be sorted and thrown away or sold. Problem is we dont know what belongs to people and what doesn't.

My idea was to hang up a sign on the tackroom door that everyone needs to label their stuff by a certain date and anything without a name on it after that date will be sorted and disposed of accordingly. Do you guys think thats a good idea? Any other ideas? Thanks :)

Yea for you! That is really exiting! I think hanging a sign on the door is a GREAT idea! And if they can't writing on it, put a peice of electrical tape on it in their own color. When you do clean it out, good luck, and start early! our little tack room for 5 horses that I own and take care of myslef takes me a whole day!

i would have a mandatory meeting for cleaning the tack room of a friday evening or a day after lessons or before lessons

I agree with horseoffire. A mandatory meeting would get it done. =)

Yep, mandatory meeting should suffice. Then you could clear everything out and maybe keep it for a few days for anyone who may have missed the meeting. My suggestion for organizing is to completely take every little thing out, decide where everything should go, then put it all back in. I do that with my tack room at least once a year but it is still cluttered. I have so much that I need to get rid of.

The barn owner will have to request this.

At our barn we have boxes that have the horses name on it and they boxes are placed on the side of the walls with a bucket on top of the box and the bucket has all the brushes, hoofpick..etc. We also sweep our tackroom around 2 times a week. I think our stables tackroom is nicely set up so maybe you could get an idea out of it.

our tack room is similar. I went through piles of stuff and threw out all the stuff that was completely unusable. I put it in a pile first just in case anyone wanted to salvage anything. I would def talk to the barn owner about it as well. good luck!

If you have like two bottles of hooflex half full, pour it all into one bottle, it saves room!

Here's how I would do it:

~Post signs on the door, in the barn, pretty much everywhere saying "If you have stuff in the tack room, it MUST be put away by X date" (I'm assuming they have tack boxes/lockers, and aren't supposed to be leaving their crap out everywhere)
~On X date, there will be a tackroom/office/barn clean out party. Pizza will be ordered for people who are willing to help out. Someone will bring some speakers for an ipod, and you will have a party.
~Everything left over in the "I have no clue whose this is/what to do with this" pile will be put in a lost in found. New signs will replace the old signs saying that after Y date (about a week or so after the party) everything will be thrown out/donated. If something is yours, claim it now or forever hold your peace. On Y date, throw it out or donate everything.

While cleaning the tack room, have people in different battle stations. Have one group cleaning all tack/leather, and sorting out stuff that is no longer useable. Have another group cleaning and sorting brushes. Have one group in charge of washing and sorting saddle pads/girths/other fuzzy things.