Effortless Garage Organizing

Many years ago my sister needed a two-foot old piece of oak for their home renovations.

The first place to look was my father’s best friend’s garage. After working their way through a few dead foxes the perfect piece of wood surfaced.

This mega full garage was a conversation piece for quite a long time.

Is your garage a Bermuda Triangle of sports equipment, tools, camping equipment, ancient Christmas decorations from days long past. If so there are some great garage organization ideas that can make your garage organizing much easier.

The danger here is once you use your garage as a dumping ground for unwanted stuff if can become a pattern of not dealing with things that can creep into your home and have larger repercussions for the clutter, disorganization and general mess in your life.

CLEAR OUT YOUR GARAGE

Planning a good garage declutter can make you some money, motivate you to learn a new skill and sell on E-Bay, hold a garage sale or give what you no longer need to charity.

Once your garage is cleared you have room for your car, you can organize your workbench or tool area making it easier to do those small home repairs and your sports equipment is better maintained and accessible so now being active and healthy is even easier.

There are three stages to a good garage clear out.

• A well thought out plan
• Taking action to declutter
• Cleaning up the mess

The quickest way to fail at organizing your garage is to not make a plan.

Enthusiastic organizers hurl themselves in the depths only to emerge an hour later filthy and exhausted having done very little. The planning stage guarantees your success. It’s time to sit back, reflect and use your creativity.

HOW TO ORGANIZE YOUR GARAGE

A simple six step plan:

• Deciding on your exit strategy for your clutter
• Your guidelines for keeping and letting go
• Putting together your organizing tool kit
• Brainstorming storage ideas and what storage containers you need
• Establishing what categories your things will go into
• Deciding your zones which means where will your newly defined categories of things go

THE SIX STEPS

Exit Strategies are important if you are clearing out big items. You may need to book a tip or a charity pick up. . Research what is available in your area.

Set guidelines- what to keep and what to throw out.

The obvious are items that are broken or damaged but what about the other stuff.

Set time limits. If you haven’t used an item for one year get rid of it.

Set amount limits, how many hammers so you need, or how many cans of white paint.

Before you even step into your garage decide what you can get rid of and why.

Getting an organizing tool kit ready before you clear out the garage. This keeps 100% of your focus on decluttering and organizing. A supply of garbage bags, boxes, masking tape, energy food and any extra help for lifting and carrying lets you concentrate on the task on hand rather than running around looking for things you need.

What are your ideas on storage, what do you have and what do you need. Some ideas are waterproof plastic boxes that can be labeled and stacked.

Hooks for hanging sports equipment and the tools you need to hand them up.

Shelving is important for the storage area of your garage and shelves need to be wide and tall.

Also what ideas do you have to use the vertical space? Having enough boxes for small things so they can be categorized and labeled will create instant order for any chaotic garage.

Once you have written some initial ideas for storage what are your garage categories?

Some ideas are :

• Paint and painting materials
• Tools, gardening things
• Camping equipment
• Sports equipment

For example once your paints and painting materials are together it is easy to identify the damaged paintbrushes, the empty paint cans and any excess items you have been storing.

You can see at a glance what you need and what you have too much of. When every item in each category is in its group you are able to see the multiples and the volume of what you have been keeping.

Once you have decluttered your category piles you can now plan your zones. This is the time to draw a map and decide where in your garage are the best places to put things back.

Your zones are your categories so; painting equipment goes in the painting zone, and need shelves and hooks while camping equipment can be stacked together in plastic boxes in the camping zone.

This gives you time to give your garage a clean out and reassess your storage options.

Try having a Garage Sale, selling on E-bay for those items that are too hard to give away.

Garage organizing can be effortless with a good plan.