10 Clever Ways to Keep Your Garage Organized
When many people buy their first home, one of the biggest draws is having a garage. Garages provide many key benefits to homeowners, and most rental properties, like apartments and townhomes, do not have them. Being able to park your car safely inside your house rather than on the street or in a parking garage is a huge advantage, especially if you live in an area with property crime issues. While the most obvious use for your garage is to park your car, there are so many other ways that you can utilize it. From turning it into a playroom to using it as a workshop, the list of alternative uses for garages is long and diverse.
With that being said, there is one alternative purpose that is easily the most common of them all: using your garage as a storage space. Using your garage as a storage space is such a natural solution for your storage issues. Your car likely doesn’t take up the entire space, and lining the walls with storage equipment is one of the most efficient ways to take advantage of all of your garage’s excess room.
While many people would agree that using your excess garage space for storage is a great idea, there is one hitch; things tend to get out of hand really quickly. Most people who use their garage for storage also tend to have a very cluttered garage. It is hard to keep a garage organized when using it for storage, largely because the stuff never gets in your way. If you only use your garage for parking and for storage, it is likely that you only pass through it when you have somewhere to be, which doesn’t leave you much time to clean up the clutter! This post is going to list 10 clever ways to keep your garage organized, that way your storage space stays efficient, accessible, and optimized.
1. Take Advantage of Vertical Shelving in Your Garage
When most people feel like they are running out of space, there is one direction that they are often failing to look: up. Taking advantage of the height of any storage space, including your garage, is one of the best ways to optimize the amount of space that you have. While your garage might only be ten feet long by ten feet wide, it is probably also ten feet tall. Houses and their corresponding spaces are often measure in terms of square footage, but it makes even more sense to measure a storage space in cubic footage, as this metric includes height and more accurately assesses how much room you have to store your things in.
Much like how a bookshelf can store a lot more books than just a pile on the ground can, utilizing vertical storage in your garage can help you to store significantly more things and in a more organized manner. Vertical storage is not optimal for all things – especially not heavy ones – but it can be a great way to store many of the smaller or categorical things that you have in your garage. If you use large shelves, you can then also use crates or bins to further organize your vertical storage. Vertical store can either come in the form of shelves that are attached to the wall or other standalone shelving units. Stacking your shelving as high as possible – even reachable only by step stool – is how you can best take advantage of the total space in your garage.
2. Incorporate Dedicated Storage Containers in Your Garage
The best kind of storage is organized storage. While vertical shelving helps you to unlock more space in your garage, using dedicated storage containers helps you to keep your things organized within that space. What are dedicated storage containers? Really, they are just regular storage containers, but used with a more defined purpose. Designating each bin or storage container for a specific purpose rather than a general one often helps to keep things more organized.
Rather than throwing all yard games into one bin, for example, it may be better to store the yard game items that are used less in one bin and the more commonly used items in a more accessible bin. Further, rather than storing all yard tools in the same bin, it might be more prudent to store gardening tools in one bin, lawn tools in another, and seasonal tools in yet another. This separation helps your items to remain organized, as the specificity of the bins helps to keep you from quickly tossing an item in the first bin that you see.
3. Only Use One Side of the Garage for Storage
This point heavily depends on how large your garage is and how it is laid out. However, in many instances, dedicating one side of your garage to storage and the other side of your garage to parking is one of the most efficient uses of your space. Naturally, if you have a one car garage, your car is going to take up more than half of the space. However, choosing to only line one of the walls with shelves instead of both can help you to keep things more organized. If you have space, you could even use some of the ground space in front of those shelves for storage, and just park your car further towards the other side of the garage.
How is this helpful for keeping your garage organized? Being able to see all of your stored items at once is often helpful when trying to keep things organized. If you opt into this strategy, it is best to store things on the left side of the car and park on the right side of the garage. This is so that every time you get into and out of your car, you are forced to see your stored items. Often, we do our best to avoid looking at messes that we are putting off dealing with into the future. Using only one side of the garage for storage condenses the potential mess to one side, and storing things on the left side of the garage guarantees that you need to see them each time you get into and out of your car, serving as a constant reminder.
4. Organize the Entire Garage Several Times per Year
This tip is a bit broader in its nature, but it is necessary to include in this post. If you want to keep your garage organized, it is crucial that you tend to it more than just once per year. While the idea of a deep spring cleaning is nice, that should not be the only time that you go through the things that you have stored! Many people do not even sort through their sorted things annually, which is one of the biggest causes of accidental hoarding. Letting your things sit unattended in crates in the garage is one of the quickest ways to accidentally accrue too many things, and it is the reason there are so many garage sales. Where do you think the idea came from?
To avoid accruing too many things for your own good, simply make a point of sorting through the items in your garage every few months. While this may sound daunting or unnecessary, there is one huge upside; doing this four times per year makes each time shorter and easier, as there is never a giant mess to sort through. So, rather than devoting an entire weekend to cleaning out your garage in March or April, you can devote a couple of hours to it several times per year. Your garage will be clean, there will be no mess stressing you out, and you will have a better idea of what things you even have stored in your garage.
5. Use Labels to Designate Areas for Items to Store in Your Garage
We talked about creating designated storage spaces, and we talked about adding a level of verticality to your garage to enhance the total amount of storage space that you have. However, we have yet to mention one of the most important parts of organizing: labeling. Labeling your storage space is one of the best things you can do to keep your garage organized, as it leaves no doubt to what items go where. Further, it makes finding the things that you are looking for exceptionally easy.
When it comes to labeling, there is no limit to what you can do. You can label large spaces categorically, with names like “lawn care,” “sports equipment,” and “tools.” You can label bins within those areas with even more detail, breaking out groups like “baseball,” “basketball,” and “golf.” You can even label the spaces where things ought to belong, like “her golf clubs” and “his golf clubs.” The possibilities are endless, and the whole idea is simply to provide structure to your storage space. Creating this structure is what keeps things from winding up all over the place.
6. Don’t Try to Store too Much in Your Garage
This one could be considered a no-brainer, but it is so important to hear. One of the biggest reasons that garages tend to get so cluttered is simply because they are overfilled. You could follow every tip in this post and still wind up with an over-cluttered space because you are simply trying to fit too much into your garage. Your garage should house the things that are used frequently enough to remain in your house. It should not necessarily be used to store items that you use once every five years. Honestly, you might even be better off thinking about why you have things like that in the first place!
If you don’t have enough space to store your things anywhere else in your house, like in closets or in the basement, you may want to consider purchasing a shed or renting a storage unit. While these certainly cost money, they can drastically reduce the amount of clutter that winds up in your garage and leave you with a much happier, calmer space.
7. Only Store Specific Categories of Items in Your Garage
This point plays into the previous one. If you are trying to cut down on the number of things that are stored in your garage, one of the best things to do is decide what categories of things deserve a space in your garage and what categories of things do not. For example, is your garage really the best place to store the folding chairs that you use every once in a blue moon? Is your garage the ideal home for the poker table that you have used three times in the past decade?
When you look at things on an item-by-item basis, it can be hard and time-consuming to decide what belongs in the garage. If you take a step back and say, for example, that sporting equipment belongs in the garage but party hosting equipment does not, your organizing efforts get much easier. All that’s left is finding a more suitable home for the things that don’t get stored in the garage.
8. Be Strategic About What is Visible and Invisible in Your Garage
Another factor to consider when thinking about ways to keep your garage organized is what is visible and what is invisible. Your garage is likely large enough to where you can stack things on top of one another or place them in front of other things. This is one of the best ways to keep your garage organized, as it is a more efficient usage of your space. However, how do you decide which things should be front and center, and which things belong on the top shelves or in the back corners?
The answer to this obviously depends on your situation, but a common angle of approach is to store the most frequently used things in the front, and the less used things in the back. This helps you to not accidentally create a mess while digging through things to try and find what you are looking for. The more bins you have to take off of the shelf to reach the one that you want, the more likely they get haphazardly thrown back onto the shelf in a disorganized manner. The things that you use less frequently, like holiday decorations, probably do not need to be front and center, if they even get stored in the garage at all.
9. Consider Storing Seasonal Objects Elsewhere
Some people are decorators, and others aren’t. Some people have new decorations to put around their house for each month, while others never change their décor at all. If you are someone who has swaths of seasonal decorations, you may find that storing them is a tall task. Christmas decorations are often the most space-consuming kind of seasonal decorations, but other things, like fall décor, tend to take up significant amounts of space, too. As these decorations literally only get used once per year, it might be best to tuck them away in a less accessible space for the majority of the year when they are not being used, as this can free up valuable accessible space in your garage.
10. Use Your Garage for Purposeful Storage, not Clutter Relocation
Finally, stemming from the previous point, one of the best ways to keep your garage organized is to use it for purposeful storing, not just junk relocation. As humans, we often hesitate to throw away or get rid of things that we don’t really use. There is just something that stings about it. However, having a cluttered garage filled with useless object can be just as taxing, mentally!
If you want to have an organized garage, it is often best to be purposeful about what you store in it. Too much stuff can make any space feel overwhelming. Using your garage for a purpose – like storing lawn care supplies and tools – helps to keep it efficient. Turning it into a receptacle for misfit items just erodes its potential as a space and builds a large mess that you eventually need to spend a full weekend dealing with.
Thank you for reading our post on 10 clever ways to keep your garage organized! Hopefully this list has been helpful as you consider how to clean up your messy garage. Using your garage for storage is an incredibly convenient idea, but it is only worth it if you can organize your things and keep your garage in order. Chaos in a garage is nobody’s friend, and storing your things with no rhyme or reason is counterproductive in the long run.
If you decide to visit Myrtle Beach or any other place in South Carolina and fall in love, reach out to us for help. We at The Boyd Team are always here to help you figure out whether Myrtle Beach is your next home or not, and we are committed to helping you find the right property for your needs and dreams. Any question that you have about moving to the area and finding your dream home by the beach is our pleasure to answer. Feel free to send us an email at eddie@boydteam.com or text or call us at (843) 222-8566, and we will get back to you as soon as we can. Being true natives of the Grand Strand and Horry County and with over 25 years of experience in the local real estate market, whether buying or selling, we can help you make your dreams a reality.
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