N+1 and the honest bike count: how to declutter too many bikes

Let me start with a confession, because I’m in no position to judge anyone. I own four bikes. I know the rule: N+1, where the correct number of bikes is always one more than you currently have. I know it’s a joke. I also keep proving it isn’t. And I know its quieter cousin, S-1, where S is the number of bikes at which your other half starts rethinking the arrangement. Most of us ride the line between the two.

So no, this isn’t a guide that ends with you owning one sensible hybrid and feeling virtuous. Bikes are brilliant. Tinkering is brilliant. A shed that smells of chain lube is a happy place. This is about something smaller and more useful: an honest count, a straight answer about what each bike is for, and a kind way to let go of the one that’s really a plan you never made.

Because, as someone on a forum once put it, you have too many bikes when you can’t decide which one to ride.

Owning a few bikes doesn’t make you a hoarder. The number on the rack isn’t the line. Riding is the line. The gentle signs, which every cyclist knows: a bike you haven’t ridden in a year, kept just in case. Maintenance that’s become a chore, with one always needing sealant and one with a creak you’re ignoring. Multiples: three track pumps, a box of take-off parts you call spares. A garage that makes you feel vaguely stressed rather than keen to roll out. None of that makes you a bad cyclist. Clutter is morally neutral, always. It just means the tap’s been running, and N+1 is very good at running it.

First, turn down the tap (N+1 edition)

You can’t get a fleet under control while N+1 keeps whispering, so before a single bike gets counted, slow what’s coming in. The cycling taps are sneaky because every one dresses up as sensible. N+1 itself: a new discipline, a deal too good to miss. Marginal gains: a lighter wheel, when the engine is you. And the nice-bike cascade, where the dream bike arrives and suddenly the bags, the rack and the lights all feel inadequate. I did this with a carbon gravel bike: I went deep on bikepacking bags, ended up with the lovely Tailfin ones, agonised my way to their carbon rack, and only then noticed I’d spent months saving grams while bolting kit on.

Two moves that help this week: the gatekeeper question, asked before any purchase (will this get me riding more, or just spending more?), and a one-week pause on anything non-essential. And the biggest tap of all is a whole new bike, because it brings its own tyres, spares, sealant, pump and maintenance with it. Sometimes turning down the tap means a flat, kind “not right now” to N+1 itself.

The honest bike count

Now the count, and it has to be honest, which means it has to be physical. Get every bike out where you can see it, in a row, then everything that goes with them: the spares drawer, the tools, the sealant bottles, the bags, the half-finished project in the corner.

Don’t decide anything yet. This is the gather-first pass from the book, and it works because gathering is nearly decision-free (it’s the same trick behind the ADHD-friendly version of the method). Most cyclists have never seen their whole setup laid out at once, and the sight does the persuading that self-talk never manages.

While you’re looking, notice which saddles have dust on them. That dust is data.

The real job each bike does

Here’s the question that sorts a fleet faster than any rule about numbers: what job does this bike actually do? Not what it was bought for. What it does now. The commuter that gets you to work in the rain has a job. A bike with a job earns its place without any justification, however scruffy it is.

So go down the row and give every bike its job, in a few words. “Commute.” “Sunday club run.” “Trails.” When you get to one and the honest answer starts with “I was going to”, stop there. We’ll come back to that one.

If two bikes share a job, that’s your first easy decision, and it’s the one from the book’s optimised stage: keep the best one and release the other. Four umbrellas, eleven biros, two bikes that both do Sunday. You need the good one.

The “last ridden” column

The lovely trick in the book is a single column on your list, and it isn’t “do I own it”. You know you own it. That’s rather the problem. The column is a date: the last time I actually rode this.

For records it’s “last listened” (there’s a whole vinyl guide built on it). For bikes it’s “last ridden”. An inventory tells you what you’ve got. This tells you what you’re actually enjoying.

Sort by that date and the bike you haven’t ridden in two years floats to the top. Not as a told-you-so, but as a nudge: oh, I’d forgotten that one, let’s take it out on Saturday. And if it floats up and still doesn’t get ridden? That’s your answer, handed to you gently. “A backup for when another’s in the shop” is fair for one spare. Not for three.

The bike that’s really an intention

This is the bit I had to learn the hard way, so let me tell you about my gravel bike.

It’s the good one. The upgrade. The bike I’d convinced myself would unlock a fitter, freer version of me. It has done about 200 miles in two years. My old steel Genesis Croix de Fer, the cheap one, the one I actually relax on, has done thousands. Partly it’s so nice I’m scared to scratch it, so it only comes out on special occasions that never quite arrive. Partly I’ve been so buried in sorting out the house that I never found the time to get out on it. Read that back slowly, because it’s the whole book in one sad sentence: I bought a beautiful thing for the life I wanted, and then the weight of my stuff stole the very freedom I’d bought it for.

Here’s what I noticed standing in my loft one night, surrounded by sealed LEGO: the stuff flooding my home was never really stuff. It was every version of myself I kept buying the equipment for. The bikepacking me. The fitter me. Each one got a bike, or a rack, or a bag, and most of them never turned up to use it. It’s the same shape as the Warhammer pile of shame: kit bought for a version of you with more evenings than you’ve got.

A bike that is really an intention has two honest exits, and neither is shameful.

Ride it. The book has a saying for this: use it or lose it. If the bike you’re too precious about is the one you’d love to ride, then ride it, scratch it, let it earn its keep.

Or let the intention go. Not the bike. The intention. Admit that the version of you who was going to take up bikepacking this year is not coming this year, and that this is allowed. There’s no such thing as someday. If there’s no actual plan and no actual date, “someday” is just “never” wearing a nicer coat, and it’s costing you space today. (If that feels harder than it should, there’s a reason for that, and it isn’t a character flaw.)

Can’t decide? That’s allowed too. A postponed decision lying around is clutter. A postponed decision with a date on it is a plan. Give the bike three months and an honest promise to ride it, and the date will answer for you. And if you’re sentimental about a retired bike, your first proper road bike say, the book lets you keep one, on purpose, as an ambassador. Hang it on the wall. Just not a row of them.

Storage as a home, not a hiding place

Once the count is honest, give what’s left a proper home, because a bike you can get to is a bike you’ll ride. Bikes on hooks or a rack, off the floor, not leaning on each other. That’s the easy half.

The clever half is the book’s point-of-use rule, which cyclists invented without knowing it. Some things should live where you use them, even in more than one place. The organiser Susan Pinsky, who writes for ADHD brains, is blunt about it: duplicate where necessary. We just call it a pump for every bike. So: a saddle pack or tool bidon on each bike, with a multitool, a tube or plug kit, levers and inflation, so the bike is always ready. One good track pump by the door (one; three is the N+1 of pumps). Your daily tools at the bench, on a board, so a missing one is obvious. And a bulk store of tubes, sealant and one contained box of genuine spares, which tops the rest up.

The guard rail is duplicate items, not functions: a multitool on every bike is brilliant; four floor pumps is N+1 wearing a sensible hat. Then the rule that stops the fleet creeping back: the rack has a capacity, and that’s the boundary. When it’s full, it’s full. A new bike earns its place by being one you’ll ride, and by replacing one that leaves.

Passing a bike on, kindly

Bikes hold their value and the second-hand market is huge, so letting one go is easier than you fear and often funds the riding you’ll actually do. List it honestly, and set a deadline so the “to sell” corner doesn’t become furniture. Sell two you don’t ride to fund one you will, and you’ve shrunk the fleet and improved it. The ones that won’t sell go to a bike kitchen, a refugee project, a kids’ scheme. The easiest way to release a bike is to picture it being ridden again. And if you ever genuinely need one back, you of all people can find another. Researching bikes is the thing we’re all undeniably good at.

Try this week (just these two)

1. Find the dusty one. Walk out to the garage, find the bike with dust on the saddle, and write down, honestly, the job it does and the last time it did it. Don’t sell it yet. Just name it.
2. Sort one bike’s kit. Your most-ridden bike gets its point-of-use kit, in a pack that lives on it. One bike, always ready. Notice how much more you ride it.

That’s all. Not the whole garage. One honest count, and a bit of kindness.

The whole method, if you want it

This guide is the taster. The free printable system gives you the sheets to work through your home spot by spot, including the Category Tracker for gathering a scattered category until it’s whole (the zone-by-zone printable guide explains how). The full method, including the Tap Cycle and the rule that keeps a sorted garage sorted, is in the book, Turn Down the Tap. And the bikes bolt-on, The N+1 Problem, takes all of this deeper for cyclists and shed-tinkerers, written by someone with four bikes who knows exactly how this happens.

No shame. Progress, not perfection. One bike at a time.