The guide
Storing things in your car: the five zones and what goes in each
A car has no spare storage, it has badly used space. This guide describes the five zones of a cabin, what each one is good at, and the order to tackle them in. It is the logic behind everything we go on to stock.
The five zones
1. The driving position
Glovebox, door bins, centre console. Kept for what must be reached without taking your eyes off the road: phone on a mount, toll badge, sunglasses, hi-vis vest.
Rule: nothing that makes you look down.
2. The passenger seat
The most used and the most misused place in the car. Anything put there slides under braking, and anything that slides ends up in the footwell, near the pedals.
Rule: a seat for a person, not a storage bin.
3. The back of the front seats
The most underused volume in the car. Vertical, at hand height, reachable from both rows. This is where the soft bags of daily life belong.
Rule: hang rather than lay down.
4. The rear bench
A living space when there are children, a dumping ground otherwise. It overflows because every object lands there with no owner and no assigned place.
Rule: one bag per person, nothing rigid loose.
5. The boot
Everything heavy, bulky, or not needed while driving. On the floor, against the rear seat backs: an object pressed flat cannot build up speed.
Rule: heavy low, to the rear, wedged in.
The rule that covers everything
Heavy low and to the rear. Useful at hand height. Nothing loose on the seats.
Those three sentences cover most situations. They hold for a city car doing ten kilometres a day as much as for an estate loaded up on a Friday evening.
Our articles on the subject
Four short reads, written here, not a product list dressed up as advice.
A loose object is not a stored objectWhat a 1.5 L bottle becomes in a 50 km/h crash
Family car: organising the back seatWho reaches what, and what goes down to the boot
An inventory of what lives loose in a carThe twenty objects found in every car, and where they belong
What we stock, and why
We start from the zone, not from the product. An item only enters the catalogue if it solves a problem identified in one of the five zones, if it fits without modifying the car, and if it comes off without leaving a trace.
That is deliberately restrictive. Many accessories sold online meet none of those three criteria: they take up one space to free another, or they stick to the dashboard for good.
Where we stand today
Our catalogue starts with zone 3, the back of the front seats, because that is where the immediate gain is largest for the least money.
The other zones will follow, gradually. We would rather add one useful item a month than three hundred imported in one go — and we are writing this page before the range is complete rather than pretending it already exists.
Where to start
If you only change one thing today: clear what is lying on your seats and on the parcel shelf. Then give your everyday bag a vertical place of its own.