How to Organize a Garage
Shelving ~
My first goal was to get everything off the ground. Clutter looks worse when its sitting on the floor. Also it is hard to clean around. I started with some simple shelving. Inexpensive, but sturdy brackets are available at your local hardware or discount store. The shelving to go on those brackets can be as simple as an unpainted piece of lumber. A one-inch by four-inch board, up to a one-inch by twelve-inch board, fits nicely on the brackets and allows you to organize the items that you need out in plain sight where you can reach them often.
Make sure you screw the brackets into a stud into your wall, and then lay your lumber across them. You won’t even need to attach the lumber to the brackets; its own weight will hold it in place. Shelves like this go up quickly and easily. Later, if you decide you want to paint your shelves, you can take the wood parts down one at a time to paint without having to unscrew the brackets.
Floors ~
If your garage floor is concrete, you can paint it with concrete paint. This is a durable paint that’s meant to be used on surfaces with heavy things on them (like your car). It will help protect your floor and make it more attractive. It is also easier to clean up spills off a painted floor than off raw concrete.
Cabinets ~
Cabinets for your garage don’t have to be fancy, and they don’t have to match each other. If you’ve ever remodeled some other portion of your house, you can probably reuse those cabinets in your garage. If you have more than one set and you don’t think they look right together, simply put them on opposite walls as long as they are not directly next to each other. They won’t look wrong. In fact, having two or more different kinds of cabinets in your garage will help visually identify different work areas.
Plastic Storage Bins ~
Visit your local discount or home improvement store to look at plastic totes and crates. These inexpensive storage devices stack on top of each other for storage, but can also be moved individually when you need a particular set of items. For instance, if you are storing your craft items in the garage, you might have all of your scrap booking items in one plastic storage bin, and all of your knitting items in a different bin. Because the bins are stackable, but mobile, you can simply pull out the one bin that you need, and re-stack the others. Your space still looks orderly.
Pegboard ~
If you have a lot of hand tools that you really need to have out where you can see them because you use them often, you can keep them organized in plain sight with pegboard. Pegboard screws to your existing wall. Just place a two by four behind your screws to space it out from the wall enough to get the pegs in. The great advantage of pegboard is that the pegs can be moved around. So if you get additional items, or you decide to reorganize, it is very easy to move the pegs closer or further apart to organize different size items.
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