A new home is the perfect opportunity to start fresh in terms of cleaning and organizing your space! You’re out of excuses to avoid those areas that tend to accumulate a lot of junk—your extra room, basement, attic, and the dreaded garage.
Your garage often seems to end up the home of miscellaneous items that you rarely use or haven’t needed in years. As things pile up, the task of finally organizing it for good becomes more and more intimidating. Fortunately, with a new house comes an empty garage just waiting to be systematically arranged with the belongings you actually use.
Make the most of your new garage space by packing up your old one and unpacking it with these strategic tips!
1.) Start with a purge.
Every successful organizational overhaul starts with a thorough liquidation of the items clogging up your space! Sort through your belongings and put some serious thought into what you really find yourself using and needing.
Make it easier on yourself by tackling this step while you pack up your garage for relocation. This way, you’ll be ready for your new one and have less to pack anyway! Separate the contents of your garage into three distinct piles—keep, sell/donate, and trash. Be honest with yourself. If you haven’t used that old toboggan in the past few years, you’re never going to take it to the hill.
2.) Sort what you keep.
Don’t ruin all the hard work you’ve done so far by haphazardly throwing the items in your “keep” pile into random boxes. Take the time to group similar items together, creating a template for how you’ll be setting up your new garage. Storing your belongings this way will make it far less challenging to maintain a system of organization once it’s in place.
The best way to group the stuff that’s going in your new garage is by use and function. Put items with a similar purpose together, so they’re all in one area when you’re completing whichever task they’re used for. Sort your one-off items by frequency of use.
3.) Maximize your wall space.
The quickest way your garage becomes cluttered is by keeping everything on the floor. Prevent the chaos before it begins by taking advantage of your wall space!
There are a ton of handy storage tools you can implement in your garage. Install cabinets, put up wall shelves, hang racks from the walls and the ceiling too. Try to keep your go-to tools in these places so you don’t have to sift through everything else to find them—and wind up making a mess in the process.
4.) Make a floor plan.
Once you’ve filled up your walls, then you can decide how you want to use the floor. Draft a loose idea of how you want to place things to make the execution more efficient. Designating where everything goes on paper first will save you a lot of time—and help you determine if you’re going to need some extra storage space.
Do your best to keep bulky items on the outskirts of your garage and out of the way. It’s easy to trip on a bike, snowblower, lawnmower, etc. in your pursuit for other things.
5.) Put your least-used items away first.
Make sure those awkward and hard-to-reach spaces are occupied before you start using your prime garage real estate. You don’t want to waste any usable space! Take your seasonal and rarely used items first, placing them towards the back of the garage and on higher ceiling rafters and shelves. These are good places to store holiday decorations, seasonal toys like a sprinkler or sled, and the cornhole set you only drag out for the family reunion once a year.
As you unpack your garage, you’ll want to keep easy-access space available for what you use the most. Frequently used items should stay toward the front, so you can just grab and go without any mess or hassle. Organizing your garage this way will optimize efficiency and make it easier to keep everything neat and tidy!
If you pare down the contents of your garage and find that your new space still isn’t cutting it, there’s no need to worry! Dowell’s Moving & Storage has professionally managed, climate-controlled storage units in Victoria BC available to secure your belongings. We also have an expert team of movers and packers that can move your stuff from one garage to the next—locally or long-distance. Contact us today to get a free quote on our reliable services!