It all started when I stumbled on this picture last weekend:

Photo Credit: Closet Factory

That’s a garage. Yep, a garage. The interior of my house doesn’t look that good, never mind the garage!

While it’s pretty, I really have no aspirations to have a garage like that. A kitchen, maybe, but not a garage. All I really want is to have a neat and tidy garage, not like the one pictured here:

My Garage, Post-Garage Sale

It’s downright depressing! Not to mention, I can’t park my car in it. Clearly, it’s time to reorganize!

Organizing a garage is no different than organizing a room in the house. (Except a whole lot hotter if you do it in July.) Here are a few guidelines:

Garage Organization Plan
1. Pull everything out of the garage into a central staging area.
2. Create zones for keep, donate, toss, and sell. I’m fortunate in that I can back my car up to my staging area and use the trunk as my donation station, and I have a Goodwill donation drop-off just around the corner.
3. In the keep area, group like items together–gardening, cleaning, tools, paints, etc.
4. Define purpose zones in the garage and establish a clear place for each item.
5. Use vertical and overhead spaces. This will clear up valuable real estate on the floor for important things. Like a car.
6. Keep chemicals in a locked cabinet or storage area. If you store your gas grill in the garage, find somewhere well away from the house to store the propane. A teensy leak and a single tiny spark could cause you problems much worse than a messy garage.
7. Label things that can’t be seen. If you’ve used tubs or boxes for storage, you’ll want to know what’s in them. (It’s not a bad idea to label the things that can be seen as a reminder of their proper place.)

Garage Storage Ideas
Unless you have $$$ for ready-made storage, you’ll want to get creative when it comes to garage storage, like these folks did:

Source: blogs.babble.com via Cammy on Pinterest

This is a file cabinet turned on its back! I’d think you could also use it for sporting goods, fishing equipment, etc.

Source: marthastewart.com via Cammy on Pinterest

I love this idea for storing watering paraphernalia, even if it is a Martha idea. I especially like that the bucket interior holds nozzles and sprinkler. The hose reels I inherited with my house are nice, but they don’t have a spot for storing the extras.

Credit: Family Handyman

I only have about five pieces of extra wood so I don’t need anything this grand, but I do think it’s a great, space-saving idea for the more ambitious DIY-er.

For now, I’m focusing on getting things in their proper places, including Goodwill. I’ll worry about making it “cute” some other time when it’s not 100+° outside.

Feel free to share any garage storage and/or organization ideas in the comments!