Keeping your garage organized sounds like an easy thing to do. But having a neat and clean garage is just a dream for some homeowners, including me. At least it used to be.
The garage is a very odd part of the house. It’s meant for vehicle storage, so when a car isn’t occupying it, this space should stay clean and empty, right? Well, in most households, that isn’t exactly the case. After some time, the garage tends to become cluttered with all sorts of obsolete household items that don’t fit in the attic or basement.
Getting around to throwing away unnecessary things and organizing your garage to actually fulfil its intended purpose (storing vehicles) after a couple of years of accumulating clutter over there can truly be a nuisance. Fortunately, it isn’t an impossible task, and with the right amount of effort and a good strategy, it can be done within a single day of hard work.
Once you clean up that space, you will want to make sure that you and the members of your household keep the garage organized and clean for longer than just a couple of days. That means implementing a storage system that will effectively keep everybody from using the garage as their preferred destination for discarding stuff. You can monitor it by installing a craftsman garage opener with an embedded camera, but that’s only the first step towards a better, more organized garage space.
Of course, there is nothing wrong with repurposing the garage into a storage space, but that, too, must be done with the right amount of know-how to prevent the clutter from reappearing all over again.
Regardless of whether you just bought a new car and need to fit it into your cluttered garage, or want to repurpose the space into something else entirely, this article will point you towards the right tools and methods to keep the garage clean and organized.
Have a Yard Sale (or Two)?
This piece of advice may not apply to everyone, as many families keep sports equipment or other stuff in their garage, that might be of use to them later. However, if your household, like many others across the United States, has served for discarding things that your family couldn’t find a use for, but didn’t quite want to throw away, a yard sale might just be the right solution for you.
If these things had been laying around there for years on end, it might be the time to face the music — you will never find the right use for all that stuff. Throwing a yard sale as a means of getting rid of the clutter in your garage will not only help you keep it nice and neat, but could also make you a couple of bucks you could use to redo the garage floor, for example.
There is no better way to get rid of stuff that you simply cannot find a good use for than a yard sale. Sure, you can book a trash container where you can throw everything and never look back, but it is not the most environmentally conscious decision of them all. Besides, by selling them to someone else, you’ll be giving these items a new life, which always feels good!
Whatever you can’t sell, donate. Whatever you can’t donate, dump.
Create an Organized Garage Storage Space
If you don’t own a car, or use it so often that you can’t be bothered to keep it in the garage, you might want to embrace the fact that all this extra space would fit much more stuff in it if you turned it into a proper “storage facility”. It’s a job that requires a lot of cleaning and re-organizing, but at the end of it, you’ll find that it was all worth it.
Once you have an empty, clean garage, you should start looking for shelves and cabinets that could help you organize all the items that are sprawling all over the garage floor. When you plan out the renovation, be sure to make as much use of vertical space as possible. Stack the cabinets close to each wall. You can even put them on top of each other if it is possible. There are many ways to go about it — if you own bicycles, you can buy a ceiling rack, which will let you store them in the garage while at the same time keeping the floor empty.
All in all, when it comes to redesigning the garage into an actual, organized storage room, your own creativity is the limit. The only thing that you need to have in mind is the regular cleaning and decluttering of the garage. Otherwise, you will end up right where you left off.
Tips for Keeping Your Garage Organized
Once you decide on what to do with everything that was stacked up in your garage, you should be careful not to stuff it with redundant items all over again. Here are some tips to help you stay organized:
- Get rid of old habits. Whenever you grab something with the thought of putting it away in the garage, pinch yourself and drop it on the dining room table or your kitchen counter. It is much harder to ignore the mess that accumulates there, and it will force you to decide on what to do with that object much faster.
- The floor is lava. If you don’t refrain from leaving items on your garage floor, the mess will never get out of hand. Keeping the floor empty of clutter is key to an orderly garage.
- Put your car inside every evening. Once you get in the habit of always leaving your car in the garage overnight, you won’t have a problem with items piling up on top of each other — there simply won’t be anywhere to put them!
The Bottom Line
Whatever you decide to do with your garage, you should know that the most difficult part is maintaining order in that space for the months and years to come. It’s a cause that requires the effort of your entire family. You need to communicate with each other about redundant items and the appropriate way to store them. If you want to truly get them to appreciate how difficult it is to organize the clutter in your garage, you should involve everybody in the cleaning process. That way, they will surely watch out not to put items away in the garage, especially if there is an alternative!
Have more tips on how to achieve and maintain an organized garage? Let us know in the comments below!