If you think organizing your garage is going to take you all day, think again. It’s actually easier than you think and doing so allows you to reclaim one of the largest, most useful spaces in your entire home. Your garage should offer more than a place to stash your car and, with the following tips, you can make it an organized and easily accessible space.
Sort the Mess
The first part of organizing is actually very easy. All you have to do is take all of the items that should logically go together and group them together. For example, all of your fishing gear, outdoor recreational items, painting supplies, gardening tools and so forth should be grouped together. This makes it a lot easier to find all of the tools you need for a project rather than hunting around for them individually.
Get Ready to Store
Home improvement stores have many affordable and quite effective storage options for you. They have systems available for wall storage, ceiling storage, and more, and you should be able to find something suitable.
When you’re planning everything out, remember that your larger items are going to go on shelves. Your largest items, such as your rakes, shovels and so forth, are most easily stored on hooks. You may also want to look at some pegboard, which can be used to store the very smallest items. Bins and crates will be necessities, and you want to make sure that you get enough of them to store items that cannot be conveniently stored otherwise.
Bins and Crates Help
You will definitely want a good selection of bins and crates. The easiest way to use these is to sort everything out by type and to put like items in bins so that you can access whatever you need for a given activity from the same bin. You’ll want to label the bins and turn those labels outward on the shelves, so you can find everything easily.
Sports equipment is particularly well suited to this type of storage. Any types of balls you have can be stored in crates, which makes it very easy to find them when you need them. For your longer sports items – golf clubs, hockey sticks, etc. – look into longer bins, which can accommodate such items. There are specialized storage solutions available for these, as well. Proper storage protects sports gear from getting damaged.
Using the Walls
You will most certainly want to use the wall space as a storage option. Shelving is the most obvious application. Before you start installing any shelving, make sure you have an idea of what you’re going to store on it. If you have larger items, they’re going to need bigger shelves. If you plan your shelving first, you get much better results. You should consider using at least one locked cabinet to store items such as expensive power tools, hazardous materials and so forth.
Pegboards are great additions to your walls for storing the smallest items you have. There are hooks available for these that can allow you to organize your wall very efficiently, making it easy to find anything that you want.
The Ceiling
Before you install any ceiling storage solutions, make sure you check the path your garage door travels. After you know which areas of your garage ceiling can be used, you can install any of these systems and get great results. You can also use hooks hanging from the ceiling to store bicycles and other large equipment, saving a great deal of space and protecting it from damage at the same time.
Know Your Labels
Put some time into your labeling scheme and make sure that it is thorough. You should also make sure that you use either permanent markers or preprinted labels that will not fade with time. Label everything that is contained in any container, as it will be very easy to find in the future and it will save you a great deal of time.
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