Garage Organization

I have been thinking about doing some garage organization for a couple of years. We park our cars in the garage each night and always come in and out of the house through the garage where I am constantly subjected to this.

 

Not my happy place for sure!  The Mr. was not enthused about this project because he had some strange idea that the garage was his domain to do as he wished.  He argued that we could always get 3 cars plus a motorcycle in the garage and that he had seen garages in much worse condition.  I agreed, but wouldn’t it be nice if everything were neat and tidy and you could always find whatever you needed I coaxed?  His reply was that he already knew where everything was.  I finally had to promise him shiny new cabinets with a new workbench to get him to reluctantly agree. Here are a few more pictures of what we started with.

 

Because we knew this was going to take us a few weekends (four to be exact) we had to do this in stages.  We started by moving everything off the back wall where the new cabinets would be placed and then painted the wall.  The day after we finished the new cabinets were delivered.

Dave spent a few days assembling the cabinets and securing them to the wall.

Once that was completed, the hardest part of the project for my gearhead, hoarding, tool-loving husband began.  It started with both of us going through the old cabinets and shelves, grouping like items together and deciding what to discard. For the sake of our marriage it became pretty clear that Dave needed to do this job on his own.

Not only does Dave have a fondness for tools but he also inherited many of his father’s and father-in-law’s tools which resulted in multiple’s of many items.  The beautiful white metal cabinets you see in the before pictures were actually out of his parents original home and he just did not understand why I thought those needed to go.  I must say that Dave ended up doing a great job, even willingly departing with a few items.  I also got a little satisfaction as he was sorting through cabinets and boxes, when I heard him exclaim more than once, “I have been looking for that!”

After the new cabinets were filled up we proceeded with painting the other walls and hanging as many items as we could using all available wall space.

We also painted the steps into the house and built a couple of shelves above the garage sink.

One of my favorite items we did was hang two bins above our large recycle container to hold the glass items that our recyclers do not pick up and the plastic bags that we take back to the store.

At one of our multiple trips to Lowe’s during this project I found some really fun tape that I needed for something, although at the time I just did not know what for.  It was Scotch Brand Tape in a chalkboard finish or a whiteboard finish.  I chose the Chalkboard finish and it came in handy when I labeled the bins.

Even though we still have a lot of “stuff” in the garage, everything has it’s own defined place to land which was exactly my goal for this project.

And just because I love a good before and after picture….here are a couple of more looks!

Being organized is definitely my happy place!

Linking to Wow us Wednesdays at Savy Southern Style.