Quickly Organize the Garage With These Simple Tips

If you’re anything at all like most people, us men in particular, truth be told, your garage doubles as a dumping ground that’s filled with clutter, odds and ends, storage boxes, and pretty much everything but the family car.

Luckily, there’s a relatively painless solution to this madness that will allow you to reclaim your garage and have a completely useable space in no time. The key lies with organizing by type, similar to the way home improvement and hardware stores arrange their wares. You wouldn’t shop in a store where you had to traipse from one section to the next to buy bolts and washers would you? Or, spackle and joint compound? Or, rakes and lawnmowers?

It simply doesn’t make much sense to have a garage that’s in complete and utter disarray as the time and energy that’s wasted looking for things could certainly be better spent elsewhere. So, gather up all of your common sense, a few empty boxes and some garbage bags and be prepared to devote an entire weekend, or at least one Saturday, to finally getting the garage organized.

You’ll want to start out by assigning specific sections to areas of the garage depending on what you have. For example, designate one wall for paint supplies or hardware, another corner for garden tools, one wall with shelves for sporting goods, another section for automotive supplies or holiday decorations.

When you’re sorting through everything, use the empty boxes for things that need repaired or those that can be donated, pitched, or returned to your neighbor. Have another pile for those items that don’t really need to be kept here. Could the luggage be kept in the attic? What about the boxes of holiday decorations? Could those be stored neatly in the basement instead?

Do an honest assessment of what you have and be use a bit of creativity to find other homes for those items that are taking up valuable space.

Also, don’t try to work around everything, take it all out, or at least piled in one corner of the garage, before attempting to put it all back in a neat, orderly manner. You will also probably accumulate another pile of stuff that doesn’t seem to fit in any of the aforementioned categories and will, therefore, need their own special area to call home.

When rearranging and replacing everything, first consider how often you use each item and plan the layout from there. Take advantage of wall space and install shelves if you don’t already have them, or wall cabinets, peg boards, hooks, and hanging racks that will help to keep things up and off the floor but easily accessible.

Now that you have the garage nice and orderly, make it a point to keep it that way by committing to a maintenance schedule of sorts, cleaning and organizing just two or three times a year, and this way, you’ll never have to start from scratch again.