Your garage is one of the most useful storage resources in your home. For many people, the problem is that there’s nothing in there except their vehicle and a huge mess that they’ve never got around to sorting out. If you can do a bit of organizing, you’ll find that the space you save can really make a difference in how much use you get out of your garage. Here are some ways that you can get your garage in order.
First, Sort
The first part of getting organized might seem like the hardest, but it really isn’t. All you have to do to begin with is take everything that logically goes together and group it together. For example, your power tools, screws, nails, extension cords and other hardware should all be grouped together. The same is true of your sports equipment, your painting supplies, your seasonal items, and so forth.
Explore Storage
Hooks are excellent solutions for storing large items. Shelves are great for medium-sized items, and for your smallest items, you’ll want to organize them into crates and bins. All of these solutions are affordable and widely available at home improvement stores.
Your long-handled tools should go on hooks. Not only does this keep them safe, it makes it very easy to find them. Paint cans, hand tools, toys and other medium-sized items can be organized on shelves, with the most frequently used items put in the most accessible positions. Your smallest items can be put into bins and crates and, after that, put on shelves.
Use Crates and Bins Right
With all of your storage space ready to go, you’ll want to make good use of those crates and bins. The easiest way to do this is to take all of the items that you grouped together that are too small to be stored otherwise and put them in the same bin according to use. You then put a label on the bin with all the contents listed. Be sure to turn the crates or bins outward so that you can read the label.
Sports equipment should, in particular, be stored in crates and bins. Crates make it easy for people to find balls that they want and longer bins and crates can be used to store equipment such as golf clubs, bats and so forth. This provides a great deal of protection for your sports stuff, which may well be among the most expensive equipment in your garage.
Store on the Walls
On your walls, you can use pegboards to store larger items. You can also use shelving, of course, but you want to put some consideration into the shelving that you buy. Larger items will require longer, wider shelves for proper storage. You can use bins and containers on these shelves, allowing you to store smaller items neatly.
You can also use pegboards to store small items. Go ahead and put your small lawn care items, gardening tools and so forth on a pegboard, which make it a lot easier to find things when you need them and, of course, can reduce a great deal of frustration. You can find hooks for pegboards that are very inexpensive and that provide a great solution for storage.
The Ceiling
There are many great, easy-to-install solutions for ceiling storage. The trick is to make sure that you check the path of your garage door so that you don’t accidentally obstruct it by installing a ceiling storage unit. You can also store bikes and other large items by suspending them from hooks hanging from the ceiling.
Label Everything
The better your labeling system is, the better your garage storage will work for you. Make sure you use permanent markers or preprinted labels to indicate everything that’s stored in a bin or crate. This is a very simple thing to do, but it makes a huge difference in how well your storage works. Taking a bit of time here can save a lot of time in the future.
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