Organizing a Garage – Garage Storage Solutions to Help Reduce Clutter

If your garage looks anything like mine used to look, it might take a small expedition party to help you walk through it at any given time. My garage used to be extremely cluttered, and it seemed as if the clutter was busy multiplying while I wasn't looking. It can be discouraging and stressful, as well as guilt-inducing, to have a garage full of largely unused items. Fortunately, it just take s a bit of time and effort to restore your garage to a well-organized, functional space. Here are a few of my tips for organizing a garage.

The first step to relieving your clutter burden is simple: get rid of your clutter. This entails taking everything out of your garage, and taking half a day or so to go through it. Hold yourself to a hard and fast rule that you will only keep one out of every five items you touch (keep only one out of ten items if your garage is so full that you can't park your cars within it). This will force you to make some hard choices about which items you keep, but you'll feel extremely liberated once you purge your garage of excess clutter. If many of the items actually hold some value, it may be a great idea to hold a garage sale. This would be a good time to get the clutter out of the house too.

Garage Storage Ideas

After you've necked down your garage clutter significantly, you can start considering appropriate garage storage solutions to store what remains. There is a staggering array of garage storage ideas to consider and options can come with a wide price variance between them, ranging from cheap garage shelving to top-of-the-line polished aluminum storage cabinets. You may also consider the more rudimentary wardrobe closet-style storage units. Your choice should depend on your taste and budget, but always favor functionality over fashion where your garage storage is concerned.

Should You Use Overhead Garage Storage Solutions?

If your garage has open rafters, you can consider using some of that overhead space for storage, but a word of caution here: if it's used so infrequently as to be stored in your garage ceiling, you should think critically about whether it's really worth keeping in the first place.