Giving Your Garage a Makeover
Are you tired of having a cluttered garage full of unorganized tools, random unlabeled boxes, and even trash that hasn’t made its way to the garbage? If so, you need to give your garage a makeover! Here are a number of tips you can use to transform your garage into an organized, useful space.
Set Aside a Day to Clean
You can try to work a little bit on cleaning your garage every now and then, but you probably won’t feel very productive or get much accomplished. Instead, set aside a full day (or an entire weekend if you have a larger than standard garage size) to clean. Having an entire day gives you the time to clean out the whole garage.
Do a Purge
You’ll most likely come across a number of things in your garage that you haven’t used in years and have no need for. Don’t be afraid to get rid of things. If the items are in good condition, you can donate them to a local charity or have a garage sale to make a little extra money. If something isn’t in good shape, don’t be afraid to throw it away!
Take it All Out!
As you go through things, take the items you want to keep and put them outside. You’ll probably be working with the garage doors open, so this should be pretty simple. Set each item or box outside on your driveway as you go through it. When you’re done sorting items, you should now have three different groupings: donate, throw away, and keep.
Update Your Garage if You Need To
Once everything is out of your garage, you can make any necessary updates. Repaint, add new lighting, put in electrical lines if you need to, etc.
Organize It
Now that you’ve tackled the clutter, it’s time to organize it. You can do this outside while you have everything out, or you can do it as you take items back into the garage. Either way, get everything sorted: tools, items you’re storing (such as holiday items), large items like bicycles, etc. See if you can combine
Set Aside a Day to Clean
You can try to work a little bit on cleaning your garage every now and then, but you probably won’t feel very productive or get much accomplished. Instead, set aside a full day (or an entire weekend if you have a larger than standard garage size) to clean. Having an entire day gives you the time to clean out the whole garage.
Do a Purge
You’ll most likely come across a number of things in your garage that you haven’t used in years and have no need for. Don’t be afraid to get rid of things. If the items are in good condition, you can donate them to a local charity or have a garage sale to make a little extra money. If something isn’t in good shape, don’t be afraid to throw it away!
Take it All Out!
As you go through things, take the items you want to keep and put them outside. You’ll probably be working with the garage doors open, so this should be pretty simple. Set each item or box outside on your driveway as you go through it. When you’re done sorting items, you should now have three different groupings: donate, throw away, and keep.
Install New Storage Solutions
What can you do to make your garage better? If you have the time, you can do this on the day you’ve organized everything, but you ma not necessarily know what you need until you see what you have. If you’ve got a lot of different tools that you want to be able to get to and use on a regular basis, you may need to get some pegboard, gridwall, slatwall, or other type of wall organization system. You may also need some hooks to organize your gardening tools and equipment. Shelving and more storage bins may also need to go on your list.
If you have a tall ceiling in your garage, think about overhead racks and other storage solutions that make use of that otherwise wasted space. However, if you still want to park your car in the garage, you may not be able to use this type of storage solution.
Make it Fun and Rewarding!
This is your chance to reclaim your garage space and make it work for you. While it’s certainly hard work, do what you can to make it a fun and rewarding process. Think of what you’ll do with the space once you have it cleaned and organized. Even if you don’t plan on doing anything other than getting it cleaned up, just imagine the space once there’s nothing cluttering it up.
Western Construction, Inc. is a local Minneapolis St Paul Garage Builder. We specialize in garage construction and serve the entire Twin Cities metro area.
Western Construction was founded by my father in 1949 on two basic principals.
"Give people what they want, and don't charge too much." - Milton Chazin
Almost seven decades and three generations later we still operate using these simple and basic principles. Times may have changed but our company's vision set forth by my father remains untouched.