We organize our garage twice a year. Our spring garage organization is pretty easy and mostly involves swapping out winter toys and gear for warm weather toys. But we some how clutter our garage over the summer, mostly because we don’t park our vehicles in the garage over the summer, so there is plenty of room to dump things in there. So deep cleaning and organizing our garage in the fall in an all-day project. Bekki is sharing tips for how to have a more organized garage.
When tackling a job as big as a garage it’s best to break it in steps to keep yourself from being overwhelmed. Take it slowly one step at a time and before you know it you will have a more organized garage on your hands.
4 Steps to a More Organized Garage
1. Think about what you want your garage to be used for. Do you need room to park your car or is your garage mainly used for storage? Do you or the husband need a work station to do side jobs or hobbies? Think about everything that you are going to want space for in your garage and keep that in mind until we get to the organization stage.
2. Start weeding through the junk and get rid of as much as you can. Over the years things can accumulate in a garage and you can even start to loose track of what is in it. These boxes and piles of stuff do us absolutely no good if we loose track of where they are and cannot find them when we need them. Ask yourself a few simple questions to help you weed the stuff out. If one of the questions is no then you need to find a place to get rid of it. Listing old items on sites like freecycle, having a garage sale or donating them to a local goodwill or Salvation Army will help you clear the clutter.
Questions to keep in mind when clearing out the clutter….
- How many of this item do I already have?
- How many years has it been since I have used it?
- How expensive would this item be if I needed to replace it?
- Does this item need worked on?
- Is this trash or is it treasure?
You need to be kind of hard on yourself when going through items and weeding them out. Bad choices in the past are the reason you are in the middle of this unorganized mess! Don’t beat yourself up about it too much because you ARE working on fixing the problem.
3. Make the storage space work for you. Normally in a garage you have 3 walls, a ceiling and a floor and if you utilize your space correctly you should have tons of storage! If your ceiling is unfinished you can pick up some large sheets of particle board at the local lumber shop and place it up in the rafters for a great storage space. If your garage is finished invest in some hooks to hang from the ceiling to keep bikes and large objects up and out of the way when not in use. Build shelving to utilize wall space and use nails or hooks to hang hooks in an organized manner. Try to keep the floor free of clutter to avoid another big pile up.
4. One you get your organizational tools in place it’s time to start putting everything in its place. Use containers and baskets to help organize smaller objects. Stick with clear containers so that you can see everything inside and label ALL containers with a broad term and under the term list each and every item in the box or basket. This will cut down on time when it comes to finding items that you need.
Do you have any tips to share on how to have a more organized garage?
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