an organized garage

The "unofficial" start of summer is "officially" here! Memorial Day has come and gone, which means it's a great time to get your garage a little more organized for the summer.

I have organized many garages over the past few years and it is always because my clients feel completely overwhelmed by the thought of trying to organize such a large space all at one time. One tip that seems to help most of my clients is to break the large area into smaller "zones". For example, you might have one zone for tools, one zone for toys/yard games, and another zone for trash & recycling.

My dream has always been to have nothing except the cars in our garage. But since that is not very practical or realistic, I simply try to keep as little as possible in our garage. Last Fall, my dad built us a big shed in our backyard; which meant that we could move nearly everything in our garage into our shed! So, this is what our garage looks like now:

It looks pretty good and I am happy with the amount of "stuff" we need to keep in our garage.

As I organized our garage, I took my own advice and created 3 main zones to break up the larger space:

ZONE #1: Car & Bike Supplies
I found this locker unit on the side of the road (free) and it fits perfectly between our service door and our garage door. We keep bike supplies (pump, helmets, tools, etc.) in one locker and car supplies (buckets, rags, wax, oil, filters, etc.) in the other. It's out of the way and kind of cute!

ZONE #2: Trash & Recycling Center

I put 2 floating shelves up on the wall outside the door to our house. They serve as our extremely simple trash & recycling center. We use one trash can for trash and the other for plastic, tin & glass. The red crates are used for pop cans and extra trash bags, supplies, etc. The brown bag is for paper.

ZONE #3: Coats, Shoes, & Misc.

I found this cute coat hook/shelving unit at Ikea and thought it would be perfect for our garage. It has plenty of hooks for coats, hats, umbrellas, etc. We use the cubbies for smaller items, and on top, I have a basket of basic tools...and a few decorations (who says I can't decorate my garage!) The 3 ladder-back chairs are from a garage sale and are a great spot for guests to sit and take off their shoes.

That's it, everything else in our shed. We have a pretty small two-stall garage so it's important to keep it clean and organized, otherwise our cars will hardly fit!

If you are thinking about tackling your garage this summer, just take a moment and think about what zones you might like to have, and then work at creating them. Take one zone at a time, and it will seem so much less overwhelming than worrying about the entire garage all at once.