How can you have more fun and less stress during the summer? Organize your garage.
With garages getting used more during the summer, if you can’t easily find and put back the items you use, it’s only a matter of time before your garage becomes a disorganized dumping ground if it isn't already. A disorganized garage will cause preparation time to take longer and may deter you from even leaving the house in the first place. And even if you do get to your activity, you may not be able to enjoy it because you’re thinking of all the work ahead of you to put everything away.
Avoid the summertime blues with these garage organizing tips:
Make a specific plan. Decide what tasks you want to accomplish in your garage and book a date on your calendar to do them. You’ll increase your chances of actually getting them done.
In order to walk easily from front to back and side to side in your garage you need to create clear walking paths.
To do that sort items on the floor into piles of:
- Bigger items that can’t be contained for ex: bikes, vacuums, furniture
- Items already contained in boxes, bins and bags
- Smaller and loose items to be contained in boxes or bins
- Trash
- Recycling
- Empty bins and boxes
Group like items together into zones based on the similarity of use of the the items for ex: sports/outdoors (camping, beach, soccer), holidays, memorabilia, tools/home maintenance/home repair, kitchen overflow (aka the Costco zone). This will help you find and put things away faster, which is key to easily maintaining your garage.
When doing a first round of sorting, avoid micro sorting items into smaller categories but instead macro sort into bigger ones. For example, holiday versus Christmas or sports versus soccer. This will make the organizing process go faster.
Shelving will get your items off the floor and bins will make it easier to grab and go. I recommend 5-shelf metal shelving units, ceiling racks and 56-66 quart sized plastic bins.
How can you have more fun and less stress during the summer? Organize your garage this summer and enjoy your time with less effort and greater ease.