Tips on how to clear out your garage and make the most of available space.
It’s warm and sunny and a great time to get started on some DIY projects, or maybe take the kids to the park for game of cricket. I’ll just go grab the stuff – except bugger, it’s buried somewhere in the garage, along with what looks like the contents of an entire extra house. Ok, maybe I’ll do some gardening…but where the blazers is my other gardening glove? Argh this is so frustrating!
Does this sound familiar to you? The family garage can be a bit of a man cave cross storage room, particularly in houses without sheds. All those power tools, paint tins, building materials, car items and gardening implements join with bikes, extra furniture, camping gear etc to create an overwhelming hodgepodge pile that can very quickly get out of hand. If yours is starting to look like it’s taking over the car space and it has become impossible to find anything, it might just be time for a clean and tidy so you can actually find that blasted left glove.
But not to fear, it’s easy to bring order to the chaos with a few simple steps.
Where to start?
1. Remove and get sorting.
Park your car on or street so you’ve got some space to move, then pull everything out and separate into piles based on use in the driveway (gardening, sports, painting etc).
2. Be ruthless with your rubbish.
Chances are there are a hell of a lot of things in your garage that are either rubbish you didn’t want to deal with, expired products and/or items and furniture you just don’t really need. Just like any storage room that hasn’t been ordered in a while, a good old throw out is a major step. Take a good hard look at your piles and ask yourself, do I really need this? Am I going to use it? Create two discard piles as you organise your bits and pieces: one for donating or selling on Gumtree and one for the skip.
3. Clean and clear away.
Now you have everything out of the way, you can clean the garage itself of all those leaves, stains and wood chips that have accumulated in the corners over the years. Use an outdoor broom to sweep clean the floor and then a high pressure cleaner to dislodge any major oil stains.
4. Give your garage some TLC.
When you think about it, your garage suffers some real abuse from heavy foot and car traffic, as well as exposure to oils, grease and chemicals. While everything is cleared away it’s a great opportunity to take steps to extend and maintain its life. Once the floor is dry and all the dirt and grease is gone, apply a sealant to the surface. Maybe chuck some paint on the walls as well to freshen up the entire space.
5. What made the cut?
Now you’ve been ruthless and cut down your piles, take another look at what you decided to keep. First question: should it stay in the garage or does it belong somewhere else? Once you know exactly what’s left for the garage, take an inventory and get an idea of how much you have of each group.
6. Plan, prioritise and zone
What am I going to use the most? This is will give you an idea of where your items will go and how they will be stored. For example, often it’s good to install bike racks near the garage door so that it’s easy for the kids to grab them without having to wheel them past cars and tools. Map out your layout on a piece of paper: create ‘zones’ for gardening/building/camping etc and prioritise your access areas.
7. Get creative with storage.
Great, you can steam ahead now! The key point? Make sure you utilise all the wall space (right to the roof) and also the ceiling (hanging space) to get the most out of your area. Now it’s time to install:
And you’re done! Now there’s no excuse – go do your weeding already. Seriously, it never ends.
-Em from the Look Local WA team
