Garage Organization

Last night I was able to complete one more item on my 26 before 26 list. I’d been working on it slowly over the last few months and can finally cross off #17: Organize the garage.

While our little house has plenty of closets, there wasn’t much outdoor storage for larger items and those not needed in the house. For the first couple years, we used an old storage shelf I had bought for an installation art piece during college. It had been painted so many times that the pieces no longer fit together properly. So I decided it was time to get things in order.

Here’s our garage before:

While this is nothing compared to the clutter most people have in their garages, it made the organizer in me cringe. Stacked chairs, sports equipment, Christmas decorations, and much more just sat where they wanted, occasionally falling over when we accidentally bumped against them. Not a great situation.

I had Clay help me remove the useless cabinet from the garage wall. Doesn’t he look excited to be here?

Then, I put together two new storage shelf units from Home Depot to fill the space. They were $70 each and much cheaper than any other cabinet option we considered.

And here’s the after with all of our boxes and things on the shelves. The organizer in me wanted to get all matching containers, but the thrift shopper in me said to make do with what we have.

The last step was to get some Elfa wall hooks and hangers from The Container Store to get the rest of the stuff up off the ground and out of the way. It seems like such a small change, moving the items 5 feet above where they original sat, but it makes such a difference. These items are the ones we only use once in a while or seasonally, so having them on the wall clears up walking space and keeps them out of harm’s way until we need them.

(Disregard the pile of building materials. These are simply waiting to be installed in our guest bathroom and will be gone soon!)

When we moved in, we had made it a point to always be able to park inside our garage (especially during the hot summer months). It’s easy to start packing and stacking items in there and soon your garage is overflowing with things you don’t even care about. This new system will hopefully make it quick and easy to keep things organized.