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Bike Storage: CLUG Gave Me My Spare Room Back

We tested out the smallest bike stand on the market and were pretty impressed

The title of this post might make it seem like some sort of awful advertorial – but I can assure you it’s not. This weekend, I fitted four CLUG bike stands in my house and gained a lot of floor space in return. 

The N+1 rule – the correct number of bikes is N+1, where ‘N’ is the number of bikes owned – is very much adhered to in my house.

Indeed, my current wish list is more like N+3 – it includes a track bike (so I don’t have to play Russian Roulette with the hire bikes at Herne Hill), winter road bike (so I don’t have to keep changing the tyres on the cyclocross bike I promised my husband would be multi-purpose) and a mountain bike. The problem is, there are two of us in one home, and no doubt his wish list is equal in length.

We moved in around a year ago, with eight bikes between us. Naturally, the spare room promptly became the ‘Bike Room’.

Since then, we’ve been able to distribute bikes in various ingenious positions, but the Bike Room has always remained home to the four most shiny machines. To help keep them tidy, I decided we needed to ‘get CLUG’.

‘Clug’ (@getCLUG) claims to be the worlds smallest bike rack. The plastic unit attaches to the wall to hold a bike upright – in a range of positions. There are various sizes available – we used four road bike CLUGs but there are mountain bike and hybrid varieties too.

The unit can be attached to most wall types and requires just two small drill holes.  At least one wheel will always be resting on the ground, but you do need to be sure that your chosen wall is sturdy enough to support some weight.

My other half and I selected our strongest internal wall, and used a digital detector to ensure there weren’t any live cables or pipes behind the surface. Thankfully our desired wall was safe, so we set about upon installation.

CLUG Installation

Each CLUG comes with two plastic clasps – a bracket to go onto the wall, and a coloured half which will grip the wheel. There are also two screws, and two anchors.

The most important step is making sure that you attach the CLUG at the right level on the wall. Too high, and your rear wheel won’t touch the ground, too low and you’re going to have a machine stationed a little bit like the Leaning Bikey of Pisa.

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There is a handy cardboard ‘guide’ in the box, which can be stuck to the wall at the correct level. We didn’t use this (typical) and instead just made a small mark where the drill holes needed to go.

With two holes drilled in the correct position, the next step is to insert the anchors that come with the CLUG into the drill holes, then screw the white half to the wall, before fitting the coloured half.

All in, it took us around an hour to get four bikes suspended in their new position.

The Result


We now have four bikes hanging happily on the wall, and considerably more floor space. It’s easier to get around the room and indeed safer for the bikes which were previously standing within scratching distance of one another. All in all, mission complete. I just need to locate another wall for the future N+1…

CLUG costs around £12 – and comes in road, hybrid and mountain bike sizes – check out the range here. 

Looking for more storage ideas? We’ve got 9 of the best here. 

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