Organize Your Garage

If you are like most folks your garage began to pile up the day you moved in the house. It is difficult to keep order when you have things to put away and not enough storage to do it neatly. There is a way to clean it all up, have enough room for parking your vehicles, space for your tools, equipment, bikes or anything you need to store there. If you are a do-it-yourselfer, that’s great. It will save you money but if you have a square thumb and don’t know one end of a hammer from the other, you can call in a handy man that will do it for you.

Here are some of the supplies you will need, although you will need to arrange your storage according to how much you have to store away.

1. On one wall you might want a work bench and a place to store tools, nails, and such. A hardwood butcher block makes a strong workbench and cabinets on the wall will work well for storing tools and nails. If you garden, you can also use the workbench for potting and add an extra cabinet or two to hold small garden tools, pots, and soil.
2. Give unwieldy items like bicycles, and skate boards their own holders on the wall. If you run out of space they can also be mounted on the ceiling.
3. Choose a basic shelving unit for kid’s toys. It can hold hockey, lacrosse sticks and any other sports equipment. Add a clip-on bag to hold tennis balls, Frisbees and the like.
4. Create a nook for wet or dirty jackets, backpacks and shoes near the door. Include plenty of pegs and shoe trays or boot racks.
5. Add a cabinet for bulky groceries, dog food, or any hefty items. Heavy duty steel shelves are ideal.
6. Place much used items closer to the garage doors where they will be handy, and swap them out as you need them. You will find hardware to hang many items on the wall such as your water hose, golf clubs, shovel, fire extinguisher, wheel-barrow, ladder, flash-light and so on.
7. You can hang a heavy wire bin to hold basketballs, soccor balls and foot balls.
8. Sturdy plastic and steel can support heavy items and are much better than particle board or melamine which can warp and crack.
9. When you finish your storage solutions you might want to consider tiling your garage floor with treaded polypropylene floor tiles. You can lay your own inter-locking tiles which are easy maintenance, or you can apply a hard epoxy coating over the existing concrete floor.
10. Remember the loft of your garage is good storage, or if there isn’t one and your garage is tall enough you might build a loft