Filed under: Your Home, Storage & Cleaning, Storage & Organization
A garage that's cute on the outside deserves a clean interior too. Photo: jlt, Flickr
Memorial Day weekend isn't all fun and games, it's also an ideal time to scratch some of the items off of your to-do list. For a fresh start to the summer season, follow these simple steps and get your garage organized. Here's the plan:
1. Sweep the Floor
It's amazing how quickly the floors get dirty despite the fact that people rarely spend time in their garage. Being so close to the outdoors and the natural elements -- rain, sleet, leaves, dirt and dust -- makes this space a victim for gritty floors. After a clean sweep with a push broom, you'll see a little bit of sparkle. Consider it a jump-start to the rest of this organizing overhaul.
2. Get rid of the junk
Garages quickly become depositories for unwanted items. Ask your family to go through the garage and remove anything they no longer use or need. Be ruthless: Those scraps of lumber you might use for a project someday? Toss 'em. The Little League gear your son won a decade ago? You've probably got photos to remember the games, toss it too.
3. Organize by Convenience and season.
Place the items you use most often -- like a hand trowel in the spring and summer months or a snow shovel during winter - within easy reach. Now that we're into the warmer season, move those ice skates, sleds, road salt and snow shovels towards the back of the garage, to provide greater access to potting supplies, kayaks and whatever else you play with when the weather is warm. And for the rarely used tools like a branch lopper, the dark, hard-to-access corners of your garage will do just fine.
4. Go Vertical
By the time you squeeze a car or two, bicycles, skateboards, lawn tools and more into a garage, it's nearly out of space. Use your vertical space by hanging peg boards for the garden tools, hammers and stray nails and hooks, and wall organizers for items like brooms, rakes and shovels to add more space for foot traffic. Home Depot's hardwood pegboards ($29) are perfect for smaller items. Go with a simple wall-hung rack for the larger tools, like this one from Ace Hardware ($11).
5. Look Up
Run out of space? Still tripping over stuff? Then look to gadgets that allow you to hang items from the overhead garage-door, or even the ceiling. Soft, light-weight items like camping gear, sporting goods and empty coolers can go in this loft shelf sold at Target ($35). For your bicycles, Closet-Masters.com offers several airborne storage solutions for the garage.