Prepping for Winter: Garage Organization

Are you embarrassed to open your garage door? Maybe you can’t fit your car in the garage because you have accumulated so much stuff. With the cold season coming, and with it the snow and ice, you’re going to want to make room for your cars; having to scrape and brush off your vehicle each morning isn’t a good tradeoff for keeping too many of your belongings in the garage.

You might be wondering where to start and how to get your clutter under control. First, pick a nice weekend to work. You’re going to need to take everything out of your garage, so try to choose a day that’s not too cold and not rainy or snowy. Gather up a few friends and get to work pulling everything out of the garage. Every box, every old tool, every scrap of wood.

Once your garage is empty, go in and give it a good sweeping. Chances are, you will come up with quite a bit of sawdust and dust bunnies. If you need to clean oil or anything else off of the floor, do that now, too. Once the inside of the garage is empty and clean, here’s what you can do to make sense of the rest of the job:

Make a big “purge” pile. Much of what you’ve unearthed in your garage, you might not have seen in months or even years. If a full year has gone by since you’ve used something, it’s probably safe to let it go. If you have any broken appliances or tools that you’re planning to fix “someday,” it’s best to let those go, too; you’re probably not going to get to it. Call your local Salvation Army or another charity to schedule a pickup; if what you’re getting rid of is junk, rent a dumpster or pay someone to haul it away.

Look into garage shelving and other accessories. While hiring a professional to install a custom garage system is the most surefire way to get your garage under control, you can do a lot on your own if you’re not able to do that. Find some overhead racks to store your bicycles, and some different types of shelving or wall racks to hold tools and other items that you’ve been storing. If you have a motorcycle or a recreational vehicle, make sure that you leave room for that, too.

Slowly move the items back into the garage, being careful to only keep what is useful to you. The reason that so many garages become out of control is because many times, we try to save things that we don’t need or even want. Only store the items that you need to; remember, the goal is to get your cars back into the garage!

Garage Parking with Tennis Ball. Finally it will be time to pull your cars in. What an exciting time that will be, if it’s been many months since you last parked in your garage! One trick to be sure that you’re pulling in far enough, but not too far is to suspend a tennis ball from the ceiling at the point where it should just rest on your windshield. This helps to take the guesswork out of parking, and allows you to use all of the space possible without worrying about whether you’ll be able to get your car positioned properly around it all.

As you get your vehicle ready for winter, cleaning out the garage is a good first step. Don’t put this off; get to it before it gets too cold to work comfortably!If you’re considering making an investment in a professionally designed and installed custom closet system, then you already know that it’s going to save you time, money, sanity and space. Still, particularly if you have an older home with small closets, as is common in Connecticut, you may be wondering how much of a difference, space-wise, a custom closet will really make. The truth is, you will pleasantly surprised, and maybe even astounded, with how much extra stuff you’ll be able to store in your closet, as well as how much space it opens up in other areas of your home. Here are a few ways that this works: