Organizing Your Garage for More Space
In many homes, the garage is the dumping ground for all the odds and ends that don’t fit inside the house. From gardening gear, paint cans, cleaning supplies to random pieces of wood, broken toys, old bikes, and last year’s Christmas lights.
Organizing all these items can present some unique challenges; What do you throw out? How do you arrange the remaining items and create ample space for your vehicle? This post will give you some brilliant garage organization ideas to help you overcome the clutter, maximize the space and make the garage more functional and efficient.
Set aside a weekend and use these tips.
Start by Emptying Out the Garage
Before introducing organizational products to solve the mess, start by taking everything out of the garage. This is where you’ll discover junk items, expired products, broken tools, and things you stowed away years ago. Go through every item with your family and decide what’s worth keeping and what to throw out or sell. Sort everything into three piles: keep, donate or sell, and toss.
After you’ve set apart the belongings you want to keep, further group them into categories to make things easier when you start placing them back in. Ideally, you’ll have groups for gardening tools, sporting gear, power tools, furniture, gym equipment, and craft supplies. Now turn to the empty garage space and thoroughly clean it from top to bottom.
Assess Your Storage Needs
After you have a sparkling garage and you know exactly what will go into it, it’s time to visualize how you will use the space to organize the items. Which part of the garage will be the gardening zone, where will the kids’ stuff be stored, and where will the workshop area be? The spot you decide to store particular items will depend on how frequently you need to access them.
Cleaning supplies should be placed in an easy to retrieve place, while seasonal items can be stashed in higher, hard-to reach areas. Now, determine whether you have enough storage compartments, then make a list of the type of storage you’d need to organize everything. This is where you need to get creative with storage ideas.
Make Shelves Your New Best Friend
When it comes to garage organization, there is no such thing as too many shelves. A shelving system can store many different types of items, including toys, painting supplies, tools, and cleaning supplies. Install open shelves for items you need to grab in a hurry and closed cupboards for stashing away odds and ends.
Add several corner shelves for organizing smaller items such as glues, oils, and polishes, which easily get lost on bigger shelves. If you want a ready-made cabinet, get a design that’s raised on legs, so you can clean the floor beneath it easily.
Install Vertical Organizing Systems
If you have ample ceiling height in your garage, create pegboard walls. Economical and simple to install, this perforated hardboard has been a garage organization staple for decades. And there are so many things you can do with a single pegboard panel.
Instead of leaning your lawn tools against the wall, mount the shovels, rakes, pruning shears, and other garden tools on the pegboard. Use hooks to hang frequently used gear at hand, such as the screwdrivers, pliers, and hammer. Your power tools, paint brushes, rollers, and brooms should also be suspended here. To find what you’re looking for fast, paint squares on the pegboard to designate spots for specific items.
Take Advantage of Stackable, Clear Plastic Containers
Another smart garage organization tip is to store like items in stackable, transparent plastic bins. Nail wire shelves to an empty wall and fill with labeled bins. Stacking allows you to maximize the space, while keeping the containers closed with lids helps keep the contents clean and lockout mold spores and all kinds of pests.
Pick bins in a range of sizes to accommodate different items. You can then use them to store anything from toys, books, holiday decorations, crafts, seasonal clothes to keepsakes. Place frequently used family necessities in an easy-to-reach spot and label all bins to make finding what you need a breeze.
Build Overhead Storage
Garage ceiling space can be used to keep items out of your floors, cut down on visual clutter, and create room for more important stuff. Use the overhead space to store light and medium weight, infrequently used belongings such as camping gear and holiday decor. Install a pulley system to hang a bike or kayak from ceiling joints. Ladder and lawn chairs can be hung by clips fastened to the joists, or you can attach storage racks to the ceiling to store seasonal clothes.
Use Hooks and Hangers
A more common method of organizing a garage using vertical space is to use hooks and hangers. You can install heavy-duty steel hooks to hang a wheelbarrow, a Grook utility holder to suspend brooms, mops, and dustpans, or a fishing rod holder to store bait-casting rod vertically or horizontally. Small hooks can be used to hold small, frequently used items like keys, scissors, or kids’ helmets.
Overcome the Clutter With Clever Storage Tips
A garage doesn’t have to be disorganized mess. Get the chaos under control by tossing out what you don’t need and adopting ingenious storage techniques. Make good use of vertical and overhead space by incorporating shelves, racks, plastic storage bins, hooks, and pegboard walls into your garage.
If you need help designing or installing your garage’s storage system, whether shelves, heavy-duty hooks, or overhead racks, get a free online home estimate from PunchList.
