Garages are great storage areas but once winter comes around you are going to want to make sure you have room left for your vehicles too. Garages are supposed to be a place for people to store their cars, lawn care items, and tools & should stay well organized easily and be completely functional. Both things are naturally true in a dream land or fantasy but can be true in reality if you put a little work into it. Having an organized garage is completely possible and you can make room for all of the other stuff that inevitably overflows into your garage.
First, to get a little organization, invest in a few simple things. To get your ultimate storage experience, first purchase sheets of peg board, hooks to go in the board of various sizes, empty baby food jars, empty sauce jars, small and large pipe clamps, small picture frame hooks, several 2X4s, plastic bins, and plastic stacking shelves. Your walls offer you so much storage space and very few people use them properly. Save your precious floor space for indoor car storage or items like your lawnmower that can't easily be hung. To maximize space even more, look up. Your ceiling can offer more space than you thought and it is possible to work around your garage opener.
Now that you've purchased some stuff to get you started, now it is time to start using them. You should make a map of where you want to place everything. Do you want your shelves near the door to the house because you'll access it frequently? Or do you need them closer the opening of the large door for gardening tools and gear? Plan out where you want your pegboards and what you want to hang on them. Remember to leave space for long items like brooms and mops to hang. Lastly, for your ceiling storage, figure out where you want to place sliding beams for your overhead storage bins.
Now that you're plan is in place, it is time to get to work. Hanging your peg board is easy as long as you take your time to do it properly. You need to use some of your 2X4s to create a platform of sorts for your peg boards since they cannot attach flat to the wall. Once you put together the platform, find your wall studs and mount the platform. Screw on your pegboard sheets. Now is the time to paint the pegboard different colors to create the perfect sports themed "man cave" or to have your garage match the aesthetics of the rest of your home. After you have it mounted and painted, start placing your hooks and hanging your items. Remember, heavier items like hammers require bigger, stronger hooks. Hang like items together for easy finding. To go above and beyond, label on the pegboard what goes on that hook that way you can always keep it organized and quickly know what is missing.
Near your pegboard, or possibly on it, you can create great storage jars for all of those little things you have. Use your empty food jars and pipe clamps to create simple storage for nuts, bolts, seeds, nails, screws, and whatever else you might have. Using different size jars allows for you to store items of different sizes easily. For heavier items, we suggest you hot glue or super glue the clamps onto the jars. Again, we recommend you organize out everything as much as possible, like sorting out all of your nails by size, and put them into specifically label jars. Once you have your jars filled and label, put the pipe clamps around them tightly. From there, you can hang the jars using the clamps onto your pegboard, work bench, or just about anything else using your picture frame holders.
For the trickier part of your garage makeover, it is time to go to the ceiling. Many people have tried various types of ceiling storage systems, but they can be unstable and expensive. We have cheap and safe (if you do it properly) way to storage stuff using 2X4s, a variety of nails, and plastic storage bins of any size. You can put holiday decorations, seasonal gear, and just about anything in bins on the ceiling. You can use bins of any size since you are creating the holders. Family Hand Man is a site that shows you step by step how to complete this project.
These few steps are here to get you started. If you still aren't finding you have enough space in your garage, you may find that you need storage greater than what you have available in your home, in which case you could try using a mini storage unit. You can keep all of your garage items and extra stuff in a convenient storage facility that is just down the road. You're items will be safely tucked away nearby and you can finally keep everything in your garage that you need! Let's face it, most of us don't get to use everything in our garages as often as we would like, so use a self storage unit and get that clutter out of your way.
