Once you have decided what you want to use your garage for, you may find there are items that need to be removed from the garage.  If you are keeping them, find a new home for them that makes sense.  If you are not keeping them, remember to reuse and recycle.

If you are not going to reuse the items, allow other people to reuse by selling items or giving them away.  Options for selling items include:

• Yard Sale
• Craigslist
• eBay - advice from a local eBay seller, Amy Weintraub of Shop It LA , suggests only selling something on eBay if it is worth over $100 - otherwise you spend a lot of time posting on line, packaging and posting the items for not much return.

Consider donating directly to charities in your area, but give them a call first to find out if they need them. Some great places to donate to in the Los Angeles area are:

The first thing to do when organizing your garage, or any space for that matter, is to decide what you want to use the space for.

The garage used to be the place to park your car, but more and more frequently, the car is being parked in the driveway and the garage has become essentially another room of the house.  Garages are turned into playrooms, entertainment rooms, exercise rooms, or just a place for storage.  Some people use their garage for a hybrid of uses - parking their car, storage and a kids craft area for instance.

However you use your garage, you do want it to be functional and not just a catch-all area for stuff you can't decide what to do with or will never actually use.

The garage is a great place to store infrequently used items and items related to outdoor use such as gardening tools and sporting equipment.

Unfortunately, the garage often becomes the place to store unmade decisions; the cute Halloween decorations your friend gave you that you didn't find a place to use last year, and you're not sure if you will use next year; the dehydrator that you did use when you first got it 5 years ago, but haven't touched for the last 4 years. All the "I might need it someday" items end up in the garage.

It's okay to have some of these things, but if they stop you parking your car in your garage, make it difficult to find the things you need, or worse, have expanded into a storage unit as well, it's time to be honest with yourself and decide whether or not to cost of keeping these items both in financial terms and in energetic terms is worth keeping them.