We’ve all been there, we walk into our once perfectly—or at least relatively—clean garage to find absolute disarray. How did it get like this? Where’s that ladder you needed? How do you plan to climb over the small mountain of random boxes to get to the toolbox you left in the corner last spring? We’re all about getting your garage to work smarter, better, and harder for you. So if you need a bit of guidance on how you should go about taking your garage back from your belongings, you’re in luck. Reclaiming the space in your garage may take you longer than a Friday afternoon, but with a plan in hand, it won’t be long before you can see your garage floor again.
Get an Overview of Your Things
Before anything else, get an idea of the items that are in your garage currently. Make sure you give yourself the time you need to look through boxes, containers, and whatever lose items may be in your garage. Once you have an idea of what’s in your garage space, sort out what you know is staying and what’s on its way out.
The simplest way to make sure that you’ve sorted through all of your belongings is to sort them out into three separate categories:
- Keep or Relocate: There are bound to be items that you know you’ll need to keep. Some of those items will likely stay within your garage. Tools, large outdoor items, etc. There are bound to be items you plan to keep, but you realize shouldn’t be stored in your garage. Keep the items you intend to relocate separately.
- Donations: If you’re like so many homeowners with a garage, the majority of the objects in your garage have been stored there with the intent of ridding yourself of them later. Those items that have value, but no longer work for you, like old furniture, tools, and sporting equipment are things that you can set aside for donations. If you find something of significant value, you might choose to sell the item.
- Waste: The items that don’t fit in the above two categories are items are likely bound for this third spot. The trash/recycling category. Place your trash in bags, break down boxes for recycling, and remove all the junk from the space.
Visualize What’s Left
After you’ve sorted through your items and gotten rid of anything you haven’t planned to recycle, trash, or donate, its time to further sort your items. Try to group items together in a way to will help you imagine storage space. Place larger, outdoor items together in one section, and smaller items—that will likely be organized in containers—into another. This will give you a chance to assess how much you have of a certain category, and in turn, how much space you’ll need for them. From here, you can make a mental note of where certain categories of items will fit within your space.
In, Organizing Your Garage: Part 2, we’ll talk about choosing the right storage systems for your space, and creating a detailed plan for your the items you intend to keep. Look for that article later this month!
This post first appeared on https://utahgaragedoors.net