Organize your Garage in Five Easy Steps

Is your garage busting at the seams? Is it a disorganized mess? Are you able to park your car in the garage? Why does the garage always seem to be a clutter drop spot? If you moved here from another state, you may have had the luxury of having a basement, but now you’ve lost that storage space. The garage is just another empty space just waiting to get filled with stuff. You may be organizing the house and don’t know where to put something, so it gets thrown in the garage. Before you know it, the place where you used to park your car is now filled with clutter.

When was the last time you emptied your entire garage? It’s time to take inventory of what’s being stored in here. How much of it are you using? What can get tossed? 

Do it now and you won’t have to be out in the summer heat organizing this space. Wouldn't it be wonderful to park your car in the garage? If there are other people who utilize the garage, enlist everybody that has contributed to the clutter and have them help on the day of this project.

Here are five tips to get your garage organized: 

1.    Everything, yes everything, must come out of the garage! You won’t know what you have if you just shift items around. There are probably items in the corners of the garage that you forgot you had! When there is clutter, there will be critters roaming around. Throw on some gloves and start digging into this space. Be prepared to clean up after little critters. You may even find a little one or two. Get items contained and onto shelves and in the future, you’ll be able to see who’s coming in and out of your garage.

2.    As you take items out, decide what you are tossing, selling, keeping, or moving to a new spot. Do not move out of the area you are working in. If you move out of the garage back into the house, I guarantee you will not go back outside. Stay in the garage and make a pile for things that need to go in other areas. Move those items to the other areas after you have completed this project. Keep in mind, if you have items that were borrowed, make a pile, and return them to their owner. During this process you’re going to find some surprises. You’re going to find things you were looking for and things you forgot you had! You may find items that you were looking for at some point but couldn’t find them, so you went out and purchased duplicate items. You’ll have fun uncovering these little surprises.

3.    As you empty the garage, place the items you are keeping in categories in the driveway or on the lawn. This will help to get you ready to create your organized systems. 

4.    Once you have your empty space, take a step back and think about how you want to function going forward. Maximize your space. Get creative. Can you utilize overhead space for seasonal items? Can you add storage racks? Decide if you need to contain smaller items in bins. Be sure to label. Do not use cardboard boxes to store items. Cardboard boxes attract mold, mildew and bugs. 

5.   Organize items back into garage according to the frequency of use. Organize everything, even lawn tools. Utilize wall space for hanging items. Think about how frequently you grab certain items.

Make your neighbors jealous. There’s going to be a lot of commotion going on in the garage. Your neighbors are going to wonder what is going on in there. Once they see your beautifully organized garage, they are going to be green with envy and hopefully it will push them to get their garage in shape too!

Now that you have this newly organized garage, be mindful before you start throwing items in here. Think about what you would do with these items if you didn’t have a garage. This is one project that you don’t want to tackle every year. If you keep it organized, this may be one of those spaces that you only need to touch once every 3 years! Sounds good, right? It’s going to be a wonderful feeling once you have your garage back! You have this brand-new empty space. What are you going to do with this empty space? Park your car! You’ll feel a hundred pounds lighter when you’ve completed this project!