It’s funny how things work out sometimes.  I recently found out that a friend of mine, whom I previously thought was completely vanilla, is actually as kinky as I am, if not kinkier.  Pretty neat.  That led to a discussion as we were driving down the road about what things we have done before and were into, and it turns out that they have a small collection of stuff that they use for BDSM.  However, my friend had never been on FetLife before or knew much about the public scene.  They knew of the existence of The Crucible, but other than that, I knew far more about the public scene than they did.

One thing that we discussed was how we keep our rope.  Turns out that my friend keeps their rope the way that I used to do when I had just started out in BDSM: grab one end in one hand, and wrap it between hand and elbow until you’ve got about a foot or so on each end, change directions, and then tie it off.  The downside to this, especially with kinkier rope (as in rope that tends to kink up a bit), is that it’s easy for things to get tangled when it’s time to take it all apart.  Nothing like having to sit there and untangle rope at the beginning of a scene.  I’d dare say that no one likes to start a scene annoyed about tangled rope, after all, but it was the only way I knew.  I stopped using this method when I was at a play party at someone’s house a few months ago and learned a better way to keep my rope when it’s not in use.

The way I now like to keep my rope creates a final product that looks like this:

How I store my rope

If you’re thinking it looks something like a chain, you are absolutely right.  And once you’ve got it in this form, you can throw it into a toy bag any which way and not have to worry about it becoming tangled, because it’s all controlled.  It looks hard to do, but it’s really not.

The first thing you do is you start out with a piece of rope, folded in half, just like you would have if you were about to tie someone up:

A whole lot of rope

Then take the end where the loop is, and tie a small knot.  This is about 2-3 inches from the end:

A quick, easy knot at the loop end of the rope

Then run a small loop of rope through your initial, knotted loop:

The first loop, through the knotted loop.

Then put another small loop of rope through that:

Another loop through the second loop. No knotting of any kind at this point.

Keep doing this, each loop through the one right before it:

Keep doing the same thing you've been doing as more of it gets wrapped up in all of this.

Continue until you have about this much rope left:

Stop when you have about this much rope left at the end.

Now is where we start to close off the whole process.  Rather than making another loop like we’ve been doing, run one end completely through the final loop:

Only one end goes through the final loop.

Last but not least, make a square knot:

Square knot at the end.

And this is what the finished product should look like:

The finished product.

If it’s all been done correctly, your rope chain should be stable and hold together just fine as long as the knot is in place.  The beauty of this is that when it’s time to play again, all you do is undo the knot, unloop that single piece that went through at the end, and then pull, and the whole thing comes out in seconds.  Plus the rope is already doubled in the right place, meaning that there’s one less thing to do before you get tying.  Just undo the knot at the end and get going at the next play event.

Plus there are benefits to having the rope in this format other than just for neat storage.  I can see this as potentially being useful for impact play and sensation play, though I’ve never done this before (but might need to now!).  But this is worthwhile for the neat storage all by itself, since untangling a badly stored rope is no fun, and this method makes that a thing of the past.

If you have suggestions for improvement on my method of storing rope, know of yet another handy way to store rope, or otherwise, please leave a comment below.