5 Easy Garage Organization Ideas for your Home
5 Easy Garage Organization Ideas
Is it already time to organize the garage? It seems like just yesterday we were completing our Spring Cleaning and getting everything ready for summer. Now, the kids are back in school and the garage is full of all their outdoor items that were basically just unpacked. The days are beginning to get colder and soon, you’ll need to protect your car from frosty mornings. Before you can pull your car into the garage, you’ll need to make some room for it. Inspired by Building Our Story’s recent journey of reclaiming her garage, here are our 5 easy garage organization ideas.
1. Rotate Seasonal Items
The best way to organize a garage is to rent a storage unit. Most seasonal items can fit in a 5×5 or 5×10 storage unit. For a relatively small cost, you can store items that you only need for a few months out of the year to keep your garage organized. For example, during Summer you can store sleds, shovels, the snow blower, bulky coats, and snow boots. At the end of Summer, you can replace them with your lawnmower, bikes, beach equipment, patio furniture, scooters, and sports equipment. This keeps unused clutter out of your garage and can help keep items safe from rust, damage, or other wear. Imagine how much extra space you’ll gain from moving the bikes, grill, and lawnmower out of the garage.
2. Get everything off the ground
While it makes sense to pile items around the perimeter of your garage, all it does it take up valuable floor space. The best solution to optimize the space in your garage is to take advantage of vertical space on the walls. Garage shelving can be a huge lifesaver when it comes to getting the most out of your space. Investing in garage wall shelving or garage storage shelves allows you to keep items off of the ground, while also having enough space to store everything. If you choose to add shelving to the walls, you can invest in durable bins to hold smaller items such as sidewalk chalk, paintbrushes, or tennis balls. Large hooks can easily screw into walls and will support heavier items like bikes or power tools.
Another great solution could be alternating between standing shelves and cabinets to store everything. This option would take up some floor space but would also allow you to store vertically. Cabinets are important, especially if you have small children. For the safety of yourself and your children, keep things like spray paints, sharp tools, pesticides, and other chemicals in a locked cabinet at all times.
3. Use the ceiling for additional storage
If garage shelving on the walls isn’t enough, keep thinking vertically by utilizing unused ceiling space. By installing ceiling tracks to hold bins, you add lots of square footage of space without putting any parking spaces at risk. Make sure these tracks are sturdy and the bins you use are high-quality, as you do not want them to fall onto your car. Ceiling storage works best for items that you will not need often, but are used often enough to not warrant storing them in your storage unit.
Some people also use large PVC tubes on their storage ceilings to store tools like brooms, rakes, and shovels to get them out of the way but keep them accessible. This can be done by drilling inside of the pipe through to the ceiling, or by using zip ties to secure it to any boards overhead.
4. Consolidate and get rid of duplicates
While you are organizing your garage, take the time to set aside anything that you have more than one of. Evaluate each pair of items and determine which you would prefer to keep. Repeat this for every duplicate you find. You’ll discover as you go through everything and narrow down to one item that this reduces a lot of unnecessary clutter.
As you are going through your items, you should also keep an eye out for any items that can be consolidated. For example, you may come across half-empty bags of potting soil that you can combine into one. You may able to consolidate other items like bubbles, used sidewalk chalk, seed packets, or paint. You should go through this process at least once a year.
5. Sort related items
As you go through your garage, separate items related to one another into piles. Tools, screws, and nails should all go in one pile. Seeds, soil, and trowels will go into another. Then, store all of these items together in the same area of your garage. Keeping everything separate will allow you to find what you need easier in the moment. For example, you may not know where your paint brushes are specifically, but if you know that home renovation items are in the right corner of your garage, you will save a lot of time looking for them.
Organizing your garage can seem like a huge task, but by following these 5 tips, you can save yourself a lot of hassle in the long run. Next year, your organization will only take a few hours Plus, you’ll be able to park your car in the garage year-round! For more garage storage solutions, check out our garage Pinterest Board. If you are ready to begin organizing your garage, visit a Guardian Storage near you to find the storage unit that best fits your needs.
————————————————————————————————————————————————
