My Home Gym
You may have gathered by now that I live a pretty active lifestyle. I absolutely love to work out and staying healthy and fit is extremely important to me. I grew up playing sports, so exercise has always been part of my life. When I don’t get at least 4 workouts in a week, I can tell a difference in my energy levels and overall mood. Exercising improves my mood, mental health, and - I’ve learned - makes me a better mom.
Lately, I’ve been spending a lot of time in this space now that I’m actively working towards losing the baby weight. If you missed my Postpartum Weight Loss Journey post, you can read it here.
From time to time I share bits of my workouts on my InstaStory. When I do, I usually get at least a question or two about what kind of equipment I use, where I keep it, and how I store it. Today I’m answering some of those questions + linking to the various products we have in our home gym (everything except my bike is from Amazon). Finally - as teased - at the end of the post I’ll share which home project David and I have decided to tackle next!
Above is my set up! It’s pretty simple. Just my bike, some weights, a bench, some balls, a yoga mat, and some recovery equipment (links at the bottom of the post). Everything is tucked away in the corner of our playroom, which is at the top of our stairs. Because of how it’s situated, my “gym” isn’t visible unless you walk fully into the room (which you can kind of see in the picture below).
I also use a TRX, which hangs on the door leading to our attic space. It’s a super handy piece of equipment to have around since 1) it can be hung from any door (it can also be screwed in, but I didn’t want to do that since I need the option to put it away) and 2) it’s super versatile (you can do SO many exercises with this thing!).
As you can also see, we installed a floor mirror so I could use it when lifting weights to check my form. 💁🏻
Tucked away inside our media cabinet (this room also serves as our upstairs family/play room) is where I keep more equipment like bands, lacrosse balls, our bike shoes, and jump rope. Those handy storage containers are from The Container Store. Neat Method organized this little space for me.
Here’s a shot of what it looks like when the cabinet door is closed. Clutter free!
And now for the fun project announcement! 🥁 We’re finishing out one of our attic spaces and turning it into a proper home gym! For a while we thought about converting it into a media room, but ultimately decided a gym is something we’ll use more often. Plus, if the next owners want to make it a media room it would be super easy to do so! My husband and I both work out 4-5 times a week and having a space in our home will save him commute time + give me more space and options.
Most importantly, creating a dedicated room for our gym will also free up space in our play room for additional toy storage and create more floor space for Kate to crawl/toddle around. It didn’t take me long after Kate was born to realize that we didn’t have enough dedicated play space for her! Since I don’t want toys all over my house, I had to fix this problem. Moving the current gym equipment into it’s own room solves that issue!
Since we did a full renovation of our house, we have put a lot of money into it already. But that’s actually why adding this extra square footage makes sense. Our home isn’t the biggest in the neighborhood, so having more livable space only increases our value and - after running the numbers - we feel confident we’ll get our money back on this addition. And by the way, there’s a 2nd attic space behind my bike, so we will still have attic storage.
TBD on whether we’ll add a window or not. It would be nice, but isn’t necessary so it depends on the cost. We aren’t set on a start date yet, but I’m hoping to have this project finished by the end of the year. It would be nice to have it done before Kate starts walking. Regardless, I’ll be sharing progress updates on Instagram so stay tuned for that!
Finally, as promised, product links below. 👇
PRODUCT LINKS
Kettlebells (I have both 15 and 25 pounds)
Medicine Ball (Mine is 10 pounds)
Stability Ball (I used this SO much during my pregnancy!)
Trigger Point Massager (for those hard to reach spots!)
Lacrosse Balls (I use these to roll out my feet, which tend to get very tender and sore)