Sunday, May 3, 2009

Organizing a garage after a long winter!

"BEFORE" pics of a garage.


"Before" picture. This is in a garage. I know it is hard to tell. This family has a 2 car garage that has a small extra space in it. They have several children so there are multiple bikes, scooters, sporting equipment, skateboards and roller blades along with helmets and kneepads!! Not to mention the husband's workbench, tools, massive fishing supplies and lawn mower. There are chairs, both outdoor and indoor to store. A large freezer. Oh and did I mention they have 3 cars? So there is always the need for car space. Of course only 2 cars get to reside inside.

The mission in this garage was to organize and sort without spending any money on more organizing items. There were already some organizational systems in place, but for the most part it was just sorting through all the stuff and getting rid of some empty boxes, broken and unused items.

You don't have to spend a fortune to organize. You don't have to have a whole garage system (although I have to say it would be soooo cool.)
You can do a lot with some inexpensive peg board, shelves. Plywood shelves up high. Bike hooks are great too. Try to get as much off the ground as you can in a garage.
The single bike stands are about $20 and you can find them at The Container Store and Target. They help bikes from falling over, especially if the bikes don't have kickstands. Like I said there were several things already in place here, it was just a matter of finding them.
For the skateboards I ended up finding a plastic milk crate that ended up being empty and we put the 2 skateboards in that. It keeps them from rolling around on the garage floor or someone accidentally falling on them.
Big empty trashcans worked well for the balls and bats and sports equipment. These owners have the large trashcans that the company provides and didn't need their old ones, so we put them to good use.


"AFTER" pictures.

Making sure all the little things are off the floor is important.
Having and open trashcan near your door is a great plus. It makes it really easy to pitch those fast food bags and empty drink cup that are in your car. Just throw them away as you are walking in the door.
Make sure if you have pet food stored in the garage that it is in a rodent proof container.

This doesn't look perfect by any means. With the number of bikes that had to fit and having to have room for the cars, these 2 bikes had to kind of jut out into the garage.

With 3 hours, hard work, lots of dust but not spending any money...you can make a difference in a garage (or any room for that matter.)


4 comments:

Kim@stuffcould.... said...

I wish my husband would organize our garage. It could be on one of those TV shows. We do not have room to park our vehicles inside. Great post.

Sharon said...

I am sorry (and ashamed) to say, the before pictures look better than my garage! I guess it's time to do something about it!

Donna B said...

That looks like my garage! Now if only the weathe would cooperate and stop raining for more than 3 hours on a weekend and we could get it looking just as good.

Algebra Teacher said...

This looks like my husband's tool shed, and he wonders why he can't find anything!! It drives me crazy. As soon as we get out of school, I am starting on that awful area. This has inspired me. We don't need to spend money just get in there and straigten it out (mostly throw out).