My family and I recently spent some time with my in-laws in Indiana. My father-in-law reorganized his garage this year, so I spent a little time walking through his garage, admiring how everything was stored. It made me think back to some other garages I’ve helped organize in the past, and I realized that many of them have a few things in common. If you’re ready to get your garage in order, here are a few tips to get you started:
Sort by Uses
When I was visiting my in-laws and walking through their garage, I noticed that they had a few sections of pegboard mounted on different walls. As I glanced at what was kept on each section, it became clear that my father-in-law had a system. For example, the section that stored his hand saws, levels, and vices was near where he performed wood working. Everything he would need was within arm’s reach of his sawhorses.
As with any organizing project, it always makes sense to keep like items together. By keeping all your painting supplies together, all your landscaping tools together, and all your sporting equipment together, you’ll be able to find everything easier when you need an item.
See Also: 7 Easy Tips to Organize Your Purse or Bag
Contain Clutter
Once all your like items are put together, it’s also important to put them in to a basket, bin, or other container. Small items can get separated and lost, so find a good container to help keep them in their spot. I like to use canvas bins to hold balls and other sporting equipment, and plastic boxes and bins to contain almost everything else. Check home improvement, department, and dollar stores to find just the right containers to keep your items together.
Use Pegboard for Tools
If you or someone in your home is a tool person, then this next tip is for you! I took this picture at my in-laws. My father-in-law has an extensive collection of tools, and he uses them on a regular basis. Rather than keep them in a tool box that would have to be hauled out for each project, he keeps all the tools visibly mounted on large pieces of pegboard that he installed on the walls. Each tool has a home, and he always knows exactly where each tool is. It makes grabbing the right tool super easy, and it is also a wow factor when you walk in to the garage and see a wall full of small tools!
Utilize Vertical Space
One of the most underutilized storage areas in garages is the ceiling space. For items that aren’t needed on a regular basis, the ceiling and other high spaces are great opportunities for storage. My favorite way to use the high space is to install hanging overhead organizers. These hanging shelves come in a few different sizes, and they have adjustable brackets to help make them work in almost any garage. They get mounted in to the joists in the garage ceiling, so they can support 250-600 lbs each depending on the style and size, which means they can hold a whole lot of stuff. These ceiling storage shelves are perfect for holiday decorations and other seasonal items that only need to be brought down once a year.
In addition to the ceiling mounted racks, you may also want to install hooks to hang bikes and ladders from the ceiling. This gets things off the floor, which makes it easier to clean the garage floor and prevent critters from finding homes in your garage. And remember the space above your cabinets. By using the top of the cabinets as another shelf, you can likely find a decent amount of additional storage space.
See Also: 8 Clever Tips to Organize Your Entire Home in a Weekend
Invest in Good Cabinets
When it comes to having a neat and tidy garage, one of the best things you can do is have good cabinets. Shelving units are good, but I’d highly recommend cabinets with doors on them. Garages are where we store lots of different categories of items, from tools and cans of paint to holiday decorations and sporting equipment. No matter how well organized these items are, they can still appear very cluttered on open shelves, so being able to hide things behind a closed door will keep your garage looking neater. Open shelves also leave you vulnerable to creating a habit of setting down items. If you need to pull something out of your car, but don’t want to take it in to the house, you may be tempted to put it on an open shelf. If that shelf has a door on the front of it, you’re going to be much less likely to open the door just to set down the item. This will help you minimize the amount of stuff that gets left in the garage to create clutter.
There’s a wide array of cabinets that can fill almost any need in your garage. If you are looking for cabinets that will last you a lifetime, you may want to consider wood built-in cabinets. If you need more of a temporary solution, or cabinets that can move with you, plastic or metal freestanding cabinets may be a better option. Whichever type of cabinets you purchase, just make sure the weight each shelf can handle is greater than the weight of the items you want to store on them. Otherwise you’ll end up with bowed or even broken shelves, and those won’t do you any good at all!
Ban Cardboard
The final tip is something you should NOT do. When you are packing up items to store in your garage, the one thing that you want to limit as much as possible is cardboard. It may be tempting to use cardboard boxes for storage in your garage, but there are a number of reasons not to do this. First, cardboard doesn’t maintain its shape over the years like plastic totes do. Second, if there is any kind of moisture in the garage like a water leak, the cardboard will offer no protection for the items in the boxes. And finally, cardboard can allow pests like rodents and roaches to make homes in your boxes.
A safer, cleaner way to store your items is in water and air tight plastic storage boxes. The boxes will cost a bit more in the beginning, but if you have a water or pest problem in the future, you’ll be thankful you made the upfront investment.
Until next time, I’m the Domestic CEO, helping you love your home.
very nice information about garage organizing
BalasHapus