Storing a treadmill in a small home: 5 handy ways

Most advice you find online assumes space you don't have. It starts with "set up a guest room" or "put it in the garage". Not this article. All five solutions below work in a two- or three-room home, and each one tells you what to measure before you buy or move anything.

How do you store a treadmill in a small home?

Slide the folded treadmill under the sofa or bed, stand it upright behind a door or in a closet, or tuck it away behind a room divider. First measure the clearance under your furniture. A compact treadmill about 14.5 cm high fits under most sofas and beds standing on legs.

Measure these three things first

Five minutes with a tape measure saves you a lot of hassle later. As a guideline, use the dimensions of a compact treadmill: folded, roughly 123 cm long, 60 cm wide and 14.5 cm high, weighing around 22 to 29 kilos.

1. The clearance under your sofa or bed

Measure from the floor to the underside of the frame, not to the seat. That difference is bigger than you'd think. Allow for at least 17 cm of clearance, so you keep two to three centimetres of play and don't have to wrestle with it every time. Sofas with a closed base are out, sofas on wooden or metal legs are usually fine.

2. The width of your doorways and hallway

If you want to stand the treadmill upright in a closet or another room, it needs to get there first. Measure the narrowest doorway in your home. At 60 cm wide, a compact treadmill fits through virtually any interior door, but a tight corner in the hallway can still cause problems.

3. The stretch of wall or closet that's truly free

Standing upright against a wall you need about 60 cm of width and 20 cm of depth, plus some room to tilt it. Look for a stretch of wall no one walks past and that doesn't have a radiator or damp exterior wall.

This is the most invisible solution there is, and also the easiest. Fold the handrail down, tilt the treadmill onto its transport wheels and roll it under the sofa. Done. You don't need any extra furniture and you don't have to move anything.

Under the bed works just as well and has one advantage: nobody bumps into it by accident there. In a bedroom, there's also less chance the machine gets in the way while vacuuming or during a birthday with ten people in the room.

The downside is dust. It collects more than you'd like, and over time it works its way into the motor housing. Put a thin mat or cotton cloth under the treadmill and pull it out every couple of weeks if you're not using it anyway.

If you don't have a sofa on legs, standing it upright is the logical second option. Upright, you end up at about 123 cm tall, so lower than most doors, and it fits behind a swinging interior door or in the bottom half of a walk-in closet.

Always stand it on its short end, with the bottom against the skirting board and the top leaning lightly against the wall. Put a non-slip mat underneath. A 29-kilo machine that tips over dents your floor and scares the living daylights out of everyone in the house.

Don't choose a spot next to a radiator or against a cold exterior wall. Heat and condensation aren't good for the electronics or the treadmill itself.

Sometimes there's no closet and no door to disappear behind. In that case, the machine doesn't need to go, just become unrecognisable. A cover made of linen or thick cotton in the same shade as your curtains does a surprising amount for that.

The result looks like a framed canvas or a mirror leaning against the wall ;). Ready-made furniture covers are available to buy, or make your own from a table runner with two seams. Add a plant or a basket next to it and the corner looks deliberately styled rather than used for storage.

A room divider made of rattan or light wood costs little, moves in seconds and works in any room. Place the machine behind it, folded or upright.

If a divider doesn't work with your floor plan, a tall plant can do the same job. A monstera or a fiddle-leaf fig of about a metre and a half breaks up the line of the machine and draws the eye to itself instead.

The advantage of this solution is that you don't have to put anything away each time. You just step away from it and you're done. For people who walk daily, that's often easier to keep up than a solution that's perfectly invisible.

The tidiest option, and the only one where you truly see nothing at all. A storage bench in the hallway of 130 cm or longer swallows the folded machine completely. The same goes for a deep console of 65 cm or a utility closet with a free wall.

Look especially at the hallway. In most small homes, that's the only spot nobody "lives" in, and where you can fit half a piece of furniture without any trouble. A storage bench then serves three functions there: storage, a seat for putting on your shoes, and a spot to drop the post.

To be honest about the downside: it takes more steps than sliding it under the sofa. Open the lid, put the treadmill in, close the lid. If you know yourself and know you'll give up after three steps, go with solution 1.

Storing your treadmill safely with kids in the house

This point comes up in almost no storage article, even though it's the first question for parents. A treadmill isn't a toy, and neither is a stored one.

The mistake made most often

Storing it too well. That sounds odd in an article about storage, but it's the reason many machines sit unused after three months. If setting it up takes more than half a minute, or if you have to move something else to get to it, it simply won't happen on a busy morning.

So choose the spot closest to the moment you actually want to walk. If you walk during your first video call, the treadmill belongs in the living room, not in the hallway closet two doors down.

Which treadmill do you actually store easily?

Not every folding treadmill is a compact treadmill. Models with a fixed console and tall handrails do fold in, but stay 30 to 40 cm high and don't fit under anything. Pay attention to the folded height and the weight, because those two determine whether storing it becomes a matter of seconds or a chore.

The RunningPad Pro with automatic incline is the choice if you want to both walk and run. The handrail folds completely flat, bringing the machine down to 14.5 cm and letting it fit under most sofas and beds. If you mainly want to walk while working or watching a show, the lighter WALKR Pro is easier to lift. The WALKR Basic has a manually adjustable incline and is the entry-level option.

An incline makes walking harder without you having to walk faster. How many calories you burn depends on your weight, your pace, the incline setting and your fitness level. All the figures you read about this are indicative and vary per person.

If you're walking in an apartment with neighbours below you, put a protective mat under the treadmill. It dampens vibrations and protects your floor at the same time. It makes little difference for storage, since you just roll the mat up.

Frequently asked questions

In short

First measure the clearance under your sofa or bed, the narrowest doorway in your home, and the stretch of wall that stays free. Then choose the solution closest to the moment you want to move: under the sofa for the living room, upright behind a door if you have no space under furniture, a cover or room divider if the machine stays visible, and the storage bench in the hallway if you really don't want to see anything.

The Dutch Health Council's movement guidelines recommend at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity movement per week. That's just over twenty minutes a day, and that's exactly why how quickly your treadmill is ready to use matters.