Six Tips for Optimal Garage Storage

When you are setting up your garage storage, there are six important things that you should do for optimal success in access and organization of your garage. Let’s take a look at these six tips and some examples that apply to most of us.

1. Organize your stuff by topic, just like you would in a filing cabinet. The same principles apply, just on a lager scale. Some common things that you may need garage storage for include: gardening tools and supplies, sports equipment, Christmas and other holiday decorations, regular household tools, and kid’s outdoor toys.
2. Within each category of items, consider how often you need to access each item. For example, among your sporting items, you may have things like racquetball rackets that you use all year long, skis and snowboards that are only used during the winter, bikes that are access spring through late fall, as well as other seasonal sporting items such as equipment for baseball and football which may be accessed off and on during the entire year.
3. Consider all the garage storage options available, and what will work best for each group of items. Looking at the sporting items again, you may want hanging baskets to keep various balls in, and hooks to hang skis and snowboards up high during the off season. For your gardening items, you may want hooks to hang often used tools on the wall, or cabinets that can be locked for keeping fertilizers or bug sprays out of reach from children. These types of cabinets are also good for locking away stains, paints, mineral oil etc. There are also special bike hooks and pulley systems to store them out of the way during the winter. Some good basic garage storage options that can be used in any home are shelves and storage bins.
4. When storing things away, consider how often you will need to access them. Things that are only used once or twice a year can be placed in bins and on high shelves. This is especially great for things like Christmas decorations. If your garage is small and space is at a premium, you can use overhead garage storage options. These nifty solutions allow you to hang bins from you garage ceiling, or there are actual shelves that hang from the ceiling. This is great for seasonal and keep sake items that are only accessed once or twice a year.

   Things that you use regularly, should obviously be down low and easy to get at. Garden tools should be near the door, preferably on hooks and shelves where you can easily see what you have and where it is. Regular household tools should be on cabinets or shelves,or hung on pegboards where you can easily see what you have, and should be located next to the door going into the house. This makes it really easy for sending kids out to the garage to grab a screwdriver or wrench.

5. Label you bins and cabinets so anybody can find anything easily without looking through everything.
6. Put anything that you use back into its proper place when you are done. This may seem obvious, but for some, this is hard to do. If you have kids, you know what I mean. When you take your clothes off at night, put them away or in the laundry. Easy concept, but how often at the end of a week is your child’s room a mess? The same applies to the garage, if you put something away after you use it, you avoid the clutter and mess that so easily takes over a garage.

Well, hopefully these five tips will be helpful. There is nothing magical about them, but if you apply them to your organizing your garage, you will find that your garage storage solutions are successful.