When I am driving or walking down the street I find it rather funny to see a home with a three car garage and then all the cars parked outside the garage. What is the garage if not a place to store the cars, especially in winter, but the garage has been turned into a convenient, attached storage space. If nothing else, this is an indication that we have too much stuff or that our stuff is not organized. If the garage is ever to be used as it was intended then something will have to be done about the excess stuff, organization must be established.

The organizing your garage must start with sorting out the clutter. What do you keep and what do you get rid of? A second idea to consider is alternative storage areas, like the attic. Although not vastly spacious, an attic offers you space to store things like seasonal decorations, camping gear, luggage and other small random boxes. Other ideas to help you organize your garage are:

Pegs and Hooks: If you are a family of bikers you know full well how much space is lost to bike storage. To clear up floor space, purchase some bike hooks that attach to the ceiling or wall and hang your bikes so they are off the floor and out of the way.

Peg Board: A few of these can be very helpful when it comes to organizing tools. You can arrange the peg board so that everything hangs neatly grouped together. All the screw drivers in section, wrenches in another section, pliers grouped together and so forth.

Coffee Cans: If you are a coffee drinker, you may be in possession of some old coffee cans, which double as great storage devices. My father stored nails and screws in this fashion and while you had to be careful when you retrieved anything, the can did keep all the loose screws from getting lost. So, you can use these discarded cans, labeling them as to the contents, to store all those small garage items.

Shelves: A good set of shelves are indispensible in a garage. They don’t need to be anything lavish, it is the garage, they just need to be practical. Simple metal or plastic covered wire shelves installed on a wall can offer you just the space you need to get things off the floor. Also organizing everything on a shelf will make items easier to find.