Pop quiz! What do these garage organizing statements have in common?
- “This chair doesn’t fit in our dining room, so I’ll put it in the garage. We’ll bring it in if we have a party.”
- “Just put empty moving boxes in the garage, we’ll figure out what to do with them later.”
- “Tools go in the garage, just put them wherever, it’s fine.”
What these sentences all have in common is that they are all lies. That chair is not coming back inside—the garage is where things to go get dusty and be forgotten. Those towers of moving boxes will hang around until your next move, unless you unload them on someone else who moves first. It’s not fine to put tools wherever, unless you like playing find-the-screw-in-the-nail-stack.
If you think of your garage as a dumping ground for things you don’t know what to do with, or as a temporary storage space until you think of something better, you set yourself up for frustration. I don’t want that for you! I want your garage to be a useful, stress-free zone. Here’s how.
Create Stations
The screws will be easier to find if they hang out with all the other fasteners. Keeping like with like not only cuts down on search time, it gives you an at-a-glance inventory. As you group things together, you might find that you have three of the same adjustable wrench. Do you need that many? You might if you never know where they are—three wrenches scattered about the house gives you three chances to find one when you need it. When you have a tool station, you only need one.
Create stations that reflect you and your family. Make a gardening station, a sports equipment station, a car care station—and for that matter, a car station. That’s right, I want you to be able to park your car inside the garage.
Make Homes Right Away
It’s fine to store stuff in your garage. That’s what it’s for! Maybe you do want to keep moving boxes, because you’re on a short lease and will need them in six months. Pick a spot in the garage to keep them, and as you unpack and break them down, put boxes there. Designating homes for items from the start saves you from going out to the garage and realizing it’s going to take a lot of work to straighten up. If your garage is in the lot-of-work stage, give us a call and we can help out.
Clean Up
Your garage is just like any other area of your home. Treat it with respect, and tidy up when you’re finished using something. A neat garage is way easier to keep clean, and I want your garage to have as few cobwebs as possible.
Use Appropriate Organizing Tools
Cabinets, slat walls, peg boards, and toolboxes are great ways to store your items. To make room for your car, use vertical space. Make sure containers are appropriate for their contents, too. Your garden shears aren’t going to do well in a plastic grocery bag—hang them on the wall instead.
A neat garage comes from a neat-garage mindset.
What unhelpful thoughts do you have about garage organizing, and what steps can you take to untangle them? Let me know in the comments below!
It’s so true. The garage often ends up being the graveyard for your stuff and it’s never coming back into the house.
That one about the moving boxes – so true! We always think we are going to get those taken care of, but it actually can be kind of hard. People who don’t have a place for large recycling struggle. But they really are rodent food, so they attract the wrong audience. In a basement, they can also easily get wet, and then they mold and disintegrate.
Stay strong and move those boxes out! In my area, I’ve noticed people giving them away via FB marketplace and similar sights, and I think this is a great idea. 🙂
Absolutely! There’s always someone who needs boxes. Let’s keep the ones we have in circulation as long as possible.
I couldn’t agree with you more. It’s funny, I grew up with a garage where both cars were always parked inside, but it was a tight squeeze around the edges of the garage, where there were too categories of things: tons of gardening (and other) tools and boxes of my father’s outdated, unusable campaign materials. The funny part wasn’t the junk, but that we had all of those tools that were never, ever used. (We had a service that mowed the lawn and took care of the yard; nobody in our family would have had a clue how to use half of the tools, and nobody knew where they came from!)
Creating zones, keeping the clutter from piling up in the first place, maintenance, and all the right organizing tools — you’ve hit the essentials!
Thanks, Julie! You’re right, having zones for stuff you don’t use doesn’t work at all. It might be organized, but if it’s collecting dust then give items to someone who can use them!
I like the idea of creating dedicated areas for specific items in the garage. And, you are quite right when you say that the garage is a place to park your car! When you make good use of vertical space and when you create specific item storage areas it is possible to have a well-organized and tidy garage that is also a home for your car.