Organizing your Garage
Did you know that 25% of American Households, that have two car garages, are unable to park their car in the garage due to their clutter. That means that only 3 out of 4 families, with double garages, actually use their garage for the intended purpose. So if your car is currently sleeping outside, then this could be a message intended for you.
Most clients that I work with always keep the garage as their “GO-TO” place when they feel reluctant in purging a particular item from the home. This means that the garage becomes a storage ground for the broken, the old things, the homeless objects, & the excess paperwork. Have a careful look at your garage. How many of the items within that space are actually used? If you can safely say that within the last 6 months to a year, you have not used that object or needed it in any way, then the chances are that you are holding on to it at your cars expense.
- Clear Out: I usually place down 4 beacons, apart from each other, when I start the clearing and sorting process. The 1st one labeled “Recycling”, the 2nd labeled “Keep”, the 3rd labeled “Give Away” and the 4th labeled “Trash”. As I carry out each item from the garage, I place each item by the relevant beacon. Once I have finished this process, the entire garage should now be empty.
- Clean Up: Once everything is out of the garage, you will now need to get the entire family involved in the cleanup. You will have a lot of sweeping to do, cleaning up of spider webs, and washing the concrete down.
- Sort “Like” Items: Now go to the Keep pile (without revisiting the other piles) and start sorting all the keep items into like piles. E.g. Place all the garden supplies together.
- Create Zones: Once you have the like piles, it is now time to decide what you would like to do with them and create logical zones. E.g. a work bench station, toy zone, gardening zone, and of course a car zone.
- Purchase Storage: The storage ideas you come up with are absolutely crucial. Try not to focus totally on the floor space as that area is for the parking of your car.
- Open shelving units: Useful for stacking containers that one needs for seasonal items.
- Wall Mounted Cabinets: This is crucial for Chemical Storage which is very dangerous for young children and pets.
- Drawer Organizational Storage: Keep all your different size nuts; hooks; anchors; screws, & bolts separated for easy access.
- Peg Boards: An excellent means to help store all the commonly used tools.
- Tracks with hooks: Are an easy fix for hanging larger items such as folding chairs, a ladder, leaf blower, weed cutter, hedge trimmer and even bicycles.
- Ceiling Storage: Mount shelving panels from the ceiling to store even more containers and items used less often such as Christmas Decorations etc.
- Bike Rack or Wall Mounted Bike Hanger: Bikes can take up a lot of unnecessary space in the garage. So you may want to consider installing a bike rack or wall mounted hanger to free up a lot of the floor.
- Labeling: Remember to label each container, each cabinet and each drawer clearly for future use. This will make it easy to find something at a glance.
Clearing out and organizing a garage may seem overwhelming, but it needn’t be. If it is too much to tackle in one day, then break this up into smaller more manageable tasks. The result will be the same. Your car will now have a place to call home as well as every other item accounted for in the garage. View this Garage Video.
Chaos 2 Organized 
Excellent advice, the labelling part seems to be an area where a lot of people fall down, it’s all well and good finding places to put everything, but it’s knowing what you’ve put in that place that eventually becomes the tricky part.
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