Your garage is too valuable a resource to be used to only store your car. If you have a disorganized, messy garage, here are some ways that you can organize it and get more out of your home. This is one of the largest open areas in your entire house, so you should be using it to its maximum potential.
Sort Your Items
Organizing starts with sorting. Take all of your items and put them in piles so that related items are kept together. For example, your snow shovel, deicer and other related materials should be grouped together. This makes it a lot easier to find items in your garage when it starts to fill up again and, of course, it makes sure you can find everything you need, not just one item out of many.
Get Good Storage
If you go to a home improvement store, you’ll find lots of wall storage units, ceiling storage accessories, crates and bins available, which are all excellent solutions and are quite affordable.
Your larger, longer items will probably be best stored on hooks. This keeps them from taking up all of your shelving space. Where shelving space is concerned, remember that smaller items can be grouped together in bins. This allows you to store them securely and safely on a shelving unit and to do so in a way where it’s easy to find whatever it is you need. You want to be sure that, when you have everything stashed away, the items that you need the most are also the most easily accessible items.
Use Bins and Crates
There are so many different bins and crates available that you can find one suitable for storing just about anything. For longer items, such as bats and clubs and other sporting equipment, you can find bins that have longer dimensions or get specialty storage gear. Other sporting items can be stored in standard bins, clearly labeled for easy access.
This applies to just about any other type of small items. For example, you could group together fishing gear, camping gear and other items into a crate, label it and make sure that everything is organized and kept safe from damage. When you do put them on the shelving, make sure you turn the crates so that the labels are easily readable from a distance. This ensures that you don’t have to go digging through crates to find what you want, and of course that you don’t have to reorganize everything after you’re done.
Use the Walls
On your walls, pegboard is one of the best storage resources imaginable. It makes it very easy to hang up heavy items so that they can be kept out of the way and in a safe storage position. For larger items that don’t need to be suspended from the wall, long shelving is an ideal solution. You want to use the bins and crates to organize your smaller items on your shelves and, of course, remember to keep the labels turned outward.
Cabinets are perfect solutions for dangerous items and expensive items. Chemicals, paint, solvents and other hazardous materials can be put in locked cabinets, safe from children. Expensive tools can be locked up to keep them safe from theft and, of course, to protect them from damage from the elements.
The Ceiling
There are products available that make using your ceiling space very simple. However, you need to do a little bit of testing. Open up your garage door and see where it needs to have open ceiling to move freely along its track. Anyplace else, you should be able to use for storage. You may want to consider getting hooks, which you can use to hang bicycles and other large items out of the way and safe from damage.
Your Labels
Make detailed labels and use permanent markers or printed labels to ensure that they don’t fade and that the lettering doesn’t run off. If you keep them pointed outward and easy to see, you’ll never get lost in your garage.
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