GUN SAFE ACCESSORIES THAT ACTUALLY FREE UP SPACE

Most people put more thought into choosing a safe than into what goes inside it. That makes sense, since the safe is the big purchase, the one with the fire rating and the steel gauge and the delivery crew. The interior ships with a few shelves and a door panel, and the assumption is that you'll figure the rest out. Then a year goes by, the collection grows by three rifles and a handgun, and the safe that looked half empty in the showroom is now a stack you have to dismantle every time you open the door.

I hear the same complaint from owners all the time: the safe is full. Most of the time, it isn't. Space isn't the problem. Access is. That's where the right accessories come in, and it's also where a lot of money gets wasted on the wrong ones.

Before you add anything, take ten minutes and empty the safe. I know that sounds like a chore, but it's the only way to see what you're actually working with. You'll want a rough count of scoped rifles versus bare ones, how many handguns you have, and how much of the space is going to things that aren't guns at all. If you haven't done a written inventory in a while, this is a good time for that too. We covered a simple system for it in Documenting Your Collection.

A standard gun rack lines your long guns up in a row, which is fine right up until the one you want is in the back. Getting to it means pulling two or three others out first, and that's how stocks get dinged and scopes get knocked off zero. The Swing Out Gun Rack fixes that by pivoting the whole rack out of the safe, so you can lift out any single rifle without touching the rest. It has padded butt and barrel rests, ships with rifle rods, and leaves floor storage open underneath.

I'll be upfront about my bias. I think this is the single most useful accessory we make for anyone with more than a handful of long guns. That said, I'm the marketing director here, so take my enthusiasm with the appropriate salt. It also has two real limits: it only fits certain models, and installing it replaces the gun rack shelves your safe came with.

Rifle rods are the cheapest fix on this list, and probably the most overlooked. Each rod is 12" long and hangs down from the underside of a shelf. You slide a barrel over it (anything .22 caliber and up), and the rifle stands upright in its own spot instead of leaning on its neighbor. The rods hold everything in place, so nothing slides into anything else every time the door opens.

There are two versions, and the difference is easy to miss. The Rifle Rod Kits ($46 for 12, $81 for 20) include a 19" x 15" piece of loop fabric, so they'll work under any shelf, including in a cabinet or closet. The plain Rifle Rods ($20 for 6, $38 for 12, $73 for 20) are just the rods, for adding to a setup you already have. If you're not sure which you need, get the kit.

Handguns are where safes get messy fastest. Stacked flat on a shelf, they take up a surprising amount of room, and you end up moving three to get to one. There are three ways to fix that, and they work better together than apart. Shelf space goes to the guns you rarely touch, and the door and walls go to the ones you reach for often.

The handgun hangers are the one I'd start with. At $23 for five, they turn the empty space under a shelf into storage you didn't have before, and that's about as good a deal as this category gets. The Velcro holders are padded nylon and attach to most fabric interiors. Granted, how well Velcro grips depends on the fabric in your safe, so test one spot before you commit a whole wall to it.

Keys, cash, a spare magazine, a passport. None of it is big, but scattered across a shelf it eats space you'd rather give to a gun. The Velcro Pouches ($28 for three, in mesh or solid) stick to the carpeted walls and keep all of that up off the shelves where you can see it.

The other thing worth adding is a 52" Long Gun Sock ($12) for the rifles you don't shoot often. It's silicone-treated cotton that protects against scratches and dust when rifles are packed close. That said, a sock doesn't fix a damp safe. It just covers the problem up, so treat it as protection from scratches, not from rust.

What you shouldn't use is the padded case the rifle came home in. Joseph Albanese put it plainly at Field & Stream: the soft padding in a gun case "is a haven for moisture." It's great for the drive to the range and a bad place for a rifle to spend the off-season.

Organization only helps if you can see it. The back corners of a 72" safe are dark, and a flashlight held in your teeth isn't a system. The 9 Wand LED Light Kit ($148) uses nine self-adhesive 15" wands with a motion sensor, so the interior lights up when the door opens. It fits safes up to 72"H x 56"W, and it does need outlet access.

Then there's humidity, which matters more once a safe is packed full, because there's less air moving around each gun. The senior curators at the NRA's National Firearms Museum put the ideal storage conditions at 70 degrees and 50 to 55 percent relative humidity. They recommend an electric dehumidifier rod over silica gel or desiccant for the job. Our 12" Electric Dehumidifier ($38) runs through the pre-drilled hole in the back of the safe or plugs into the internal outlet if your safe has one.

Albanese also suggests a cheap hygrometer so you know the real number instead of guessing, and he notes that going below 30 percent risks drying out wood stocks. For the full rundown on placement and rod-versus-desiccant, see our gun safe dehumidifier guide.

If you'd rather not piece it together yourself, here's how I'd spend the money at three different levels. Prices are current as of this writing.

Very little of this is permanent, which is part of why it's worth trying. Velcro holders and pouches peel off and move. Rifle rods come down and go back up under a different shelf. Handgun hangers slide off as easily as they slide on. The one exception is the swing-out rack, since it replaces your gun rack shelves. Keep the original shelves somewhere dry so you can put the safe back the way it came if you ever need to.

Give any new layout about two weeks before you judge it. If you're still pulling three guns to reach one, move the things you use most to the door and the front of the rack, and push the safe queens to the back. If the hygrometer is reading above 55 percent after you've filled things in, check that the dehumidifier has room to breathe and isn't buried behind a row of stocks.

That's how I'd set up a safe. Most people need far less than the full build, and plenty of collections are perfectly happy with $50 worth of rods and hangers. If you've found a layout that works better, I'd genuinely like to hear about it.

Sources: NRA Family, "Top 6 Expert Tips to Prevent Gun Rust"; American Hunter, "How to Properly Clean and Store Your Rifle After Hunting Season"; Field & Stream, gun rust prevention; NSSF Project ChildSafe, "Ten Tips for Firearm Safety in Your Home".