Garage Storage Solutions

The garage is often a neglected area of the home, used for parking and storing valuable items that just don’t fit in your home anymore. But there’s so much potential in a garage for building a space tailored to fit your needs. You just have to find it buried beneath all that clutter. Start with these simple tips on how to organize your garage and open up the space and its possibilities.

YARD SALES CAN CLEAR THE CLUTTER IN YOUR GARAGE

It’s hard to organize when you’re not even sure what you’re organizing. Go through your garage and separate what you plan to keep from what can be tossed or sold. This is where a good old-fashioned garage sale can work wonders. You wouldn’t have to do much. Just open up the door, and let curious customers do the hard work for you.

PRACTICAL IDEAS FOR ORGANIZING YOUR GARAGE

Now that you have space, determine what you’ll use it for. Whether it’s for a man cave or home gym, there are lots of options for using this new-found space!

Whatever hobbies may unfurl in your now clutter-free garage, start by zoning the space based on what you’ll use it for, so you can make the most of it. Take a look at these suggestions for organizing your garage, and make the space your own.

Keep it scalable. When working on your storage concept, it’s important to remember that your needs and items in your garage will change over time. By working with pegboard, or other materials that easily adjust to fit new configurations, you’ll invest once in a system that can conform to your evolving home improvement and storage needs.

Get the heavy-duty shelving in play. Although heavy and definitely requiring a “team lift” to get from the store home, each garage has a place for storing heavy items. Pick up coated, durable industrial-grade shelves that adjust in height. Mount them permanently to the wall by bolting through the shelving to the studs. Find them online, and save your back by getting them delivered to your door.

Consider the bin first. You’ll need to commit to a bin if you’re going to be storing kid’s sports equipment, gardening materials, car-care products or other household items. Pick up several bins of the same size, and build custom-sized shelving units so the bins stack neatly in them. You’ll make great use of your vertical space by going four or five bins high.

Install Sono tubes to the wall for vertical storage. Attach several four-foot lengths of Sono tube to one another, then attach them into the wall studs. Easily access rakes, brooms, baseball bats, and other long-handled items.

Hang garden implements from wall studs. Attach two 18” x 18" pieces of ¾ inch plywood to either side of an exposed stud, about 7 feet off the ground. Be sure that the outside edges of the plywood are parallel and they tip up slightly. Then, slide the neck of upside-down brooms, rakes, and shovels in. There you have it: space, saved — and you’re ready for your landscaping projects.