A ground-floor location and the out-of-sight nature of many garages can make them ideal places for collecting enormous amounts of unused belongings. But confronting a disorganized garage for a car or better storage is manageable in small bites.
“Instead of devoting a whole weekend to it, I suggest people resolve to spend 15 minutes a day on it,” said Cindy Bernstein, owner of Aim 4 Order in Baltimore. “It really adds up.”
Such an approach might allow homeowners to keep a New Year’s resolution to declutter their space or at least allow them to park their car somewhere that doesn’t require mandatory use of an ice scraper.
Here are some online resources that can help in reclaiming a cluttered garage:
» Hgtv.com has tips for organizing a garage, including how to make it a functional work space.
» Realtor.com, the site of the National Association of Realtors, has tips on maximizing the space of even small garages.
» Napo.net has tips on how to get started with any home-organizing effort and specific ideas on how to handle cluttered garages.
Freeing space in a garage for its intended use may be on the to-do lists of many Americans. Though 82 percent of homes have at least a two-car garage, only 15 percent of people park their cars in them, according to the National Association of Home Builders.
Garage organization, according to the National Association of Professional Organizers, should begin with determining how a homeowner wants to use the space and then come up with a plan based on that. For instance, a goal of creating additional household storage space should allow for floor-to-ceiling shelving, racks, stackable drawers, hooks or pegboards.
The next step, according to Bernstein, is to separate everything in the garage into items that are truly needed and used, and belongings that could be thrown or given away.
“If you have things that you didn’t realize you had, then you probably don’t need it,” Bernstein said.
The Salvation Army, Craigslist and Freecycle are all great options for getting rid of unneeded household items.
Once the space is cleared, install hooks for everything from bikes to recycling bags, which can free all-important floor space.
Freestanding industrial steel shelves can provide a low-cost way to store frequently needed items within easy reach, while seasonal items are placed higher and out of the way.
High-end garage-organizing systems also can be helpful, but Bernstein’s clients have found low-cost plastic storage bins with labels to be equally effective in keeping the space organized.
Another frequent tip of organizers is to involve the whole family in the project. This gets the job done faster and might discourage future use of the garage as the household dumping ground.
