Organize your Garage and Breathe a Little Easier

It’s easy for your garage to get neglected.

It’s where we toss everything that doesn’t have a home. Old boxes of holiday decorations, broken appliances, boxes of old clothes, you name it and its probably hidden somewhere deep within the confines of your dusty, cluttered garage.

Organize and Reclaim your Garage

HGTV says you should make sure you finish your project before you start a new one. Back-to-back days, like the weekend, are perfect for this. This way you won’t have a ton of unfinished projects stacking up and cluttering your space. Try to plan for a dry weekend because you’ll have to pull items out of the shelter of your garage and you don’t want to ruin your brand new lawn mower or power saw in the process.

Don’t do it alone. Hire an expert, call your friends or round up a team of helpers. Otherwise, it may turn into an overwhelming task that will be abandoned halfway through which only creates MORE cluter. Make sure you have a plan for directing your friends or helpers through the process from start to finish.

Give everything a home. Make categories for all your stuff. Typical categories include recycling, sports and recreational equipment, automotive, camping gear, seasonal decor, garden gear and tools. Evaluate things like luggage and paint to see whether you can store them in another location—inside your house perhaps?

Stock up on containers. Once you know your categories, begin grouping them onto the driveway or in the center of the garage. A few cardboard boxes will help you get everything together because everything from huge paint cans to nuts and bolts will eventually need to be contained. Be sure to label the boxes.

Determine the best garage layout for your lifestyle. Decide where you want each type of item to live, keeping in mind how much you use it and the amount of space available.

Parking space and shelves at eye level or within reach are considered “valuable real estate.” Less valuable real estate would be very high or low shelves and should be reserved for less frequently used items.

Make the most of vertical space with wall-mounted pegboards. Also take advantage of overhead space with sturdy shelves that mount to the ceiling.

Set an organizing schedule. Do it once every four months or once a year—whatever works best with your schedule. If it doesn’t make it onto your calendar, it’s less likely to happen. So the calendar is key.