How you can better organise your garage space

It’s easy to let your garage go to waste. The whole point of a garage is to provide a safe and convenient space to park your car, but this doesn’t work out for everyone.

Your garage might be too small for your car, or you might just have so much stuff in it that your car won’t fit. Or you might have another purpose for that space.

Whether you’ve recently moved into a house with a garage or you’ve been meaning to get it sorted for ages, now is the time to organise your garage space and put it to good use.

Declutter

The first thing you need to do is get rid of the things you don’t want or need. Some people have a habit of hoarding things and putting them away in the loft or garage “just in case”. Then, a decade or so down the line, you’ve still got this useless junk clogging up space in your home.

If you see a bit of yourself in that, don’t worry. The best thing you can do is to every now and then go through your belongings and have a clear out. Some things are obviously junk, but other things might get used now and then. Only you know which belongings you want to keep.

Still, the garage seems to be a hotspot for clutter. Dedicate a day or a weekend to completely clearing it out and sorting through the things in there. Make sure that you have plenty of bin bags or, in more extreme cases, you hire a skip.

This is also a good opportunity to give your garage a deep clean. Once it’s decluttered and clean, you can move onto organising your garage and using the space.

Add storage

The next step is to add some storage space. The appropriate storage solution depends largely on what you plan on using your garage for. If you want to store your car, you need to make sure you still have space to walk around the car, so a lot of storage might not be possible.

One great option is shelving if the garage is a mess, because it doesn’t take up a lot of room and can give you a place to put the things you need in the garage. It also keeps your belongings off the floor and easy to access.

But what if you don’t plan on using your garage to park your car? Or what if you have a garage large enough to use for other things as well?

A lot of people use their garage as a utility or storage room. You might have an extra deep freezer in it, which is a good way to store food. Or you might have your washing machine and dryer in your garage to keep them out of the way of the house. Laundry can get damp if left in a garage for too long though, especially if it’s not heated. 

Finally, you could use your garage as a workshop if you have a physical job at home or a  hobby that requires some extra space.

As well as shelving units, you could also invest in cupboards and trunks to store extra things. Tools should be cleaned and stored as soon as you use them, as this keeps your tools in good condition and easy to find.

Keep on top of it

Once your garage has been cleaned and organized, it’s important to keep on top of it. Even if the whole purpose of your garage is to store things, you should still make sure that you can easily navigate your garage and find everything in it.

Make it a semi-regular habit to check and tidy the garage. Even if it’s just once a year, it should help keep you on top of things. If you do this often, it will be far less work each time.

Speaking of making a habit of things, think about how you put things away after you use them. Some people are really good at using something and putting it away each time, but not everyone does this naturally. 

Sometimes the best thing to do is to work with your habits and your workflow. If you keep putting something in the wrong spot, rearrange where you keep things because that “wrong spot” obviously makes more sense to you. Every few days, go around and put things away that you might have left out so it doesn’t build up.