The garage is a space that is too often misused. Everything and anything is stored there, so much so that sometimes you can’t even park your car there. Too bad, because these are square meters who deserve to be optimized. It is essential to have a perfectly ordered place where everything could be found in a fraction of a second. Yes, yes, it is possible to organize a storage space in your garage. How to put an end to this shambles? Here are some ideas for achieving what some of us take for a feat.
Sort, donate or throw away to declutter your garage
Tidying up your garage is a bit like “tidying up your life”: decluttering requires a very scrupulous inventory. Before the mess no longer allows you to put one foot in front of the other, you have to be able one day to eliminate everything that has been there for ages and that you don’t have Not needed anymore. Between the lack of time that one invents for oneself and the fear of having to draw on one’s memories or to eliminate the relics “that could be useful, one never knows”, the good excuses are without limit. In fact, we are so lazy to get started that we are handling the art of procrastination like never before. However, you have to jump into the water because a garage is a surface worth gold. It is really a pity to waste this unsuspected place.
When the time has come to say stop to the mess, you have to block off a day, a weekend or a week in order to stick to it. We start by taking everything out in the garden by depositing on one side what we throw without hesitation (here, the birth clothes of the son who got married last year!!) and on the other side what we keep (the toolbox received from Aunt Justine at Christmas, 11 years ago and which has never been opened). Keep only what is absolutely essential or that have been used at least once in the past two years.
To facilitate sorting, you have to be operational, logical, and not fall into sentimentality. We throw away empty boxes, post-war toys too, clothes we no longer wear, ditto, and we’re not even talking about trinkets or chipped crockery or broken appliances. Everything that we don’t keep, which is uselessdilapidated or ugly can be offered at the flea market, given away, or left at the landfill in the bins provided for this purpose. And we no longer practice the policy of “just in case, it can always be useful” because we have seen where it leads.
Arrange every free space in the garage
Now that the garage is decluttered, it finally looks much bigger than before! It is therefore now possible tooptimize space.
- Attach to the wall high cupboards in order to place the freezer or a work surface on trestles below,
- Equip the entire DIY area with shelves and one pegboardso that the workbench is fully integrated into the storage.
- hang a garden tool rack.
- Install high bars from one end of the garage to the other in order to create a storage space under the ceiling. You can fit bulky items that are not too heavy such as a surfboard or a ladder for example, folding garden chairs, a parasol, skis or even large boards.
- Reserve a space to be equipped to store the stock of toilet paper and paper towels, foodstuffs non-perishable such as groceries, and another inaccessible to children where to store maintenance productslaundry detergent and fabric softener, pool treatment et phytosanitary for plants.
- Install a shelf accessible to the little ones on which everyone can store their rubber boots, sandals, sneakers and garden clogs,
- Use the walls pour to suspend everything that can be, such as the ironing board, bicycles, brooms and push-brooms, in order to free up floor space.
- Overlay plastic lockers equipped with a lid (and wheels for older children). Transparent, they make it possible to immediately identify their content (small tools, comics, clothing, games and toys, etc.).
- Store duvets in compactable covers to be placed on a high piece of furniture where they will wait for the winter, sheltered from dust.
It’s still nicer to see a well-ordered garage, where every space has been optimized, where everything is easy to find. If it is spacious enough, despite its new layout, it should even fulfill its primary role: to accommodate the car. Nice feat! But for this order not to be ephemeral, it is necessary to get into the habit of clean the garage regularlyof throw away as you go what no longer works, give or sell what we no longer use.