Easier Garage Organization
A garage is a wonderful space to have, especially when you live in Northern Illinois. A garage shelters us from the elements, saving us from scraping snow and ice off our cars. It’s a place to unload kids and groceries without being blasted by a blizzard or soaked from a storm. And, of course, it’s a holding place for a million other things, from baseball mitts to garden chemicals to our cardboard box collections.
We ask a lot of our garages and that is why garages often fail in doing their primary job - storing our cars!
In fact, 47% of Americans admit they have a hard time being able to park in their garages. I myself have to park on the driveway when my garage is full of a client’s product for an installation or I have a lot of donations and recycling items. A couple of weekends ago I finally tackled my own garage and it was a powerful reminder of the satisfaction we can get from driving up to a clean, tidy space. That satisfaction plus the 4 client garages we’ve organized in the last 2 weeks inspired this post!
Garages are an important part of our home. An attached garage, if you are lucky enough to have one, is basically another room in your home. It is often the primary way a family enters the home and may be the first space you see when you come home after a long day. It’s the last part of your home that you see as the garage door closes so if that last look is chaos, it has more impact on us than we may realize. In fact, clutter and chaos in this space has a way of spreading into the home, making nearby rooms like kitchens and laundry rooms less tidy. An untidy garage weighs on us aesthetically and emotionally and impacts our productivity. Not to mention, an untidy garage has us parking out in the rain!
My clients often tell me that garages seem to be one of the hardest spaces for them to keep tidy. Part of that is the weather - who wants to tidy a garage when it is 10 degrees in there? In fact, when it’s that cold we all tend to just throw things in the garage and slam the door as quickly as possible, promising ourselves that we will sort it all out in the spring. Secondly, we store naturally messy things in the garage like smelly sports equipment and yard tools and oil and gas. Finally, every time the garage door is opened, stuff just blows in like leaves and spiders. Even the most spacious garages tend to get messy over a long cold winter.
Warmer weather is here (sort of) but who wants to spend the first pretty days in the garage? That’s where OrganizeWell springs into action because garages are a favorite space for us to organize. Why, you might be wondering? Because it doesn’t take long to set these spaces back in order and our clients are visibly relieved when they realize that the process of organizing the garage was not awful.
Here is the OrganizeWell process we follow to make garage organizing less awful:
Divide your time in thirds:
Organizing a garage doesn’t have to be an all day-long study in suffering. In fact, we do most garages in 3-4 hours. As organizers, we know we need to deliver results in a short time frame so we must use the homeowner’s block of time wisely. To deliver visible results by the end of the session, we divide our time into 3 distinct activities:
Sorting
Editing
Organizing
The organizing stage means finding a place for everything and putting everything in its place. A place for some things may not be in your garage at all. It’s essential to take these things where they need to go, rather than leaving them for later. This is the step we most often see missed by many of our clients. It’s very common for us to uncover these items set aside for returning to the store or the collections in bags of things for recycling or donations. Once these ‘tasks’ are put down, they can easily get ‘lost’ in the other stuff in the garage. This step is so essential, we make it part of our service to take these things with us at the end of each session because we know piles of good intentions become clutter quickly. When working on your own, leave time at the end of the garage cleanup schedule to complete these errands right away.
Don’t move everything:
Organizing shows and videos have the organizers taking everything out of the garage and putting it on the driveway to sort. What they don’t show is the huge crew of workers whose labor is edited down to a nice, little block of time. We usually work in a team of two, so we focus on efficiency which means we move the least amount of stuff and avoid moving anything multiple times. When we first review a garage, we are looking for the underlying categories to build on. Often similar items are already grouped together so we start with those zones of storage. For example, if bikes are together, we find the roller skates, helmets and scooters and add them to that grouping.
As we group things, we double check that those zones are located where it makes the most sense for that client. In one recent garage, we found much of the camping gear together on the shelves close to the door. Talking with the client, we discovered they took a couple of camping trips in the summer. It made sense that camping gear was stored together but we relocated it to two shelves in the wall cabinets. Everything was easy to locate when it was time to pack up AND we freed up space by the back door for items used more frequently, like the husband’s golfing gear.
Sort and edit to fit the space you have:
As we are grouping and placing items, we are creating categories that make it easy to make editing decisions. When a client can see all the camping items together, they feel more comfortable making editing decisions. When we show them how much will comfortable fit in a cabinet or on a shelf, it creates a visual editing “goal”. We stress to clients that they don’t have to make perfect editing decisions, they just need to edit to the point that everything fits with a little breathing space left over. The storage zones we create help our clients see where they may have excess or duplication but they also provide a guide for HOW MUCH they need to reduce to have everything fit and look tidy.
Making space just makes sense
Imagine for a moment that you have a kitchen that contains all the tools, pots and pans, food and supplies needed but it doesn’t have counters, cabinets, shelves or a pantry. Everything that belongs in the kitchen is there in the room but just piled on the floor. It would be almost impossible to work in that kitchen and cooking and cleanup would be a nightmare!!
Garages are similar to kitchens, in that they are a working space which contain a vast variety of things - tools, sporting equipment, shoes, gardening supplies, and so much more. But most garages lack even the most basic storage. Without proper storage, things are going to end up in piles on the floor because they have nowhere to go. A side benefit of good storage is that the garage and the things in the garage stay tidier and are easier to clean. There are storage solutions for every budget but the best solutions help us to get things off the floor and up on the walls.
Every garage needs a drop zone
The area between the car doors and the house door is prime real estate for organizers. This is the path the home owner walks everyday and is the best place for a drop zone to hold items the family uses frequently or needs to be able to find quickly. Open and visible storage like shelves and hooks are best. Because the drop zone is used most frequently, it’s a good idea to reset these spaces on a monthly basis by tossing trash, completing tasks, and putting things away that belong somewhere else. It is a nice idea to have cleaning tools, like a broom, dustpan or a shop vac near the drop zone. The garage is a messy place and we are much less likely to tidy up when we can’t find the cleaning tools.
Treat your garage as an extension of your home and invest in organizing this space! An organized garage supports your family’s daily routines, activities, and necessary household functions. With well planned out zones, practical storage solutions, and a realistic plan for maintenance, your garage can go from a source of chaos and stress to a space that truly compliments your home and your life. If the job feels bigger than what you want to tackle alone, OrganizeWell is ready to help make the process simple, efficient and far less overwhelming.