Organize Your Garage

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Is the garage your nemesis? If so, you are not alone! I want to help you organize your garage and make progress, whether it’s already pretty clean or very messy. A survey showed that most people agree the garage is the most difficult place to keep organized. This was definitely my experience as a professional organizer. I could see the embarrassment cross my client’s faces – they’d take a deep breath before opening that garage door to show me around. So to me, the survey results are not surprising:

• 62% of people say the garage is the most cluttered area of their home.
• 52% of people are dissatisfied with the organization of their garage.
• 47% of people can’t park in their garage because of clutter.
• 37% of people say their garage looks like a nightmare! (They used the word nightmare. 😱)
• 21% of people avoid going into their garage at all because of the mess.

How do you even approach organizing a garage that is a nightmare?! The good news for y’all, is that I’ve done just that many times. The plan for cleaning up a “nightmare” garage would actually look a lot like someone doing regular maintenance on a garage, it will just take more time, with extra emphasis on the decluttering portion. The extra time will require more determination and will power to push through, but the effort will be more than worth it. Even though it feels like a big job, it’s still just a lot of tiny jobs added together.

And if your garage falls somewhere between doing-great-just-need-maintenance and nightmare, maintaining the garage is still just a bunch of tiny jobs that add up to make a big impoact.

Here’s an example of several bursts of small progress making a huge impact. I’m proud to say that I do not stage my home photos to make my home appear magazine-cover ready as many blogs do. I think that does you a disservice in the same way as seeing photoshopped supermodels. It’s pretty to look at, but it doesn’t give you a realistic goal. I want you to see what authentic progress looks like and that a garage doesn’t have to look perfect to feel good!

Organize Your Garage: Focus on Decluttering First

Whether your garage is at a Nightmare Level, or just needs a little touch-up, get the clutter out first. My guess is some of the clutter is meant to be tossed or donated already, but it got stuck in the garage on the way out the door. During the Declutter Challenge, this is why I encourage regular trips to donate, because when big piles start to form in the garage, it can become a new headache to get rid of them, especially when the donate piles mix with other piles.

Here’s the kind of clutter most people are dealing with in their garage, along with some ideas and links for dealing with each issue.

1. Home and holiday decor: Read Let Go of Unused and Unwanted Holiday Items This Season and remind yourself it’s okay to let your tastes change for decor. You’re allowed to change your mind about something looking good. You don’t actually need decor, it’s just a fun bonus of life. Get rid of decor that doesn’t bring you joy because the second you don’t like it anymore, it’s simply clutter.
2. Old documents: Read Tips for Handling Paper Clutter
3. Mementos/ souvenirs: Read Saying Goodbye to Sentimental Items & Memory Boxes
4. Books/ manuals: Is the manual available online? The chance you’ll reach for an old manual is already low, and even lower if the information is a google search away. When are you going to go searching in the garage when you could just google?
5. Wires/ cables: Create a boundary with a bin. Keep what you need/want that will fit and get rid of the rest. Creating a boundary works for many other categories as well.
6. Cleaning supplies: If you’ve had this cleaning supply for a while without wanting to use it, give it to someone else and move on. You obviously are already living without it! I utilize neighborhood buy/sell/free pages to get rid of stuff like this quickly without having to google how to dispose of it properly. If it’s new-ish, chances are someone will want it.
7. Donate Items (that were never donated): Time to just put these in the car and drive to donate. Just get ‘er done!

Remind yourself that you deserve to live in a home, not a storage unit. Look for reasons it’s okay to get rid of things rather than look for reasons to keep stuff! (Read: You Deserve A Home, Not A Storage Unit)

Organize Your Garage: Creating Order

While normally we clean before we organize, the garage is a little different. It’s hard to clean until it at least starts looking a little organized. You may want to be able to see a good portion of the floor before you try to mop. And you may need to be able to get through some piles in order to reach the walls and dust cobwebs out of corners.

Sort Into Piles of Like Items

If your garage is chaotically stuffed with junk, start by creating a little order. Decluttering is always the first step of organizing. Sort through the items, creating piles by type. It’s so much easier to deal with one pile of similar items at a time than one-by-one as you find them. For example, if you find a bunch of different electrical cords, when you put them all together, it’s a lot easier to decide what to keep or toss. Another example is kids’ sports equipment, because when you get it all together, it’s a lot easier to see you bought a new soccer ball to replace the old one. Sort in this order: the floor, then shelves, and then surfaces.

After you sort the garage into piles, it’s easy to break the big job of dealing with each pile into smaller chunks. You can make smaller goals, like going through one pile a day or maybe clearing a specific area on a Saturday. Certain piles may need your spouse or kids’ help to sort, but you can still make progress in other areas and piles.

Sort and deal with stuff until the piles contain only what will remain in the garage. I say “deal with stuff” because the garage is full of surprises, but hopefully most of the “dealing” is just decluttering and finally getting the stuff out of the garage and to it’s next home. “Dealing with” could mean other things too, including making a repair, returning something borrowed, or maybe simply finding a permanent spot for an item to belong. Don’t keep procrastinating and just deal with each item as needed.

Put Things Away (aka: Organize)

Now it’s time to finish dealing with the piles by finding a spot for everything you’re keeping. Just like when we declutter inside, if something doesn’t have a place it belongs, you need to get rid of it. If you really want to keep it, you’ll need to find something else to get rid of to make space. This is the rule to live by if you want an orderly home: every item gets a set place it belongs. If your stuff doesn’t have a permanent home, how can your home ever actually be tidy?

I have a ton of Garage Organization Inspiration here if you want ideas for dealing with specific garage stuff.

You can also see my favorite garage I’ve organized here.

Organize Your Garage: Clean Your Garage As you Can

If your garage stays mostly organized throughout the year and you just need to tidy it up a few times a year, you can pass quickly through the organizing phase and get right to the cleaning.

It’s pretty common to give your garage a sweep, but it also needs an occasional dusting, wipe-down, and even mopping. Yes, I mop my garage floor! Not regularly, but probably about 3 times a year I’m filling a mop bucket and going to town. For weeks following a mopping, my garage feels sooo good. And I get to feel that good feeling every time I leave and come home, and especially while I’m emptying groceries from my car or grabbing something out of my freezer (an almost daily occurance).

I talk a lot about Cleaning The Garage here, and How To Maintain a Clean Garage here.

Organize Your Garage: Helpful Garage Inspiration

I’ve written a lot pertaining to the garage over the years. Here’s everything so far, with a little summary.

• Avoiding Garage Sales: “Don’t let a future garage sale become an excuse to keep clutter and use your house as a storage unit for junk.”
• Organized Garage Inspiration: “Making your garage an organized and useful space has a domino effect on making your entire home feel organized and makes it easier to keep that way. Here’s some inspiration to get you started organizing your garage!”
• Garage Organization Reveal: This is still my favorite garage I’ve organized for us in 20+ years of marriage.
• Moving In: How To Clean & Prep The Garage: Moving? Don’t forget to prep the garage before you move in. It can easily be overshadowed by preparing the inside of the house, but you’ll be glad you also prepared your garage!
• How To Keep Your Garage Organized: Keep up with the progress you’re making in your garage! Create habits and a system that keep your garage looking good.
• How To Organize A Stand-Up Freezer (in the garage): If you’re going to organize the garage, you should go ahead and get the garage freezer organized too!
• Garage Organizing: How To Hang Bikes, Scooters, Ripsticks, Balls & More: Use the space on your walls to clear up more floor space!
• Pegboard Hack & Organizing Garage Shelves: Use shelves and pegboards to get just the right organizing!
• Let’s Organize The Garage {Tips & Strategies}: Let me walk you through some basic organizing tips and strategies to get your garage organized, finally. Basically, it’s another approach to what you’re currently reading.
• Garage Organization for Real Families: I wrote this post way more than a decade ago, but I’m keeping it around to show what real progress looks like. How my garage looked better and better as I just kept doing a little here and there. I want to always be the kind of blog that shows what real homes look like instead of the staged magazine-worthy homes that are hiding what it actually looks like most of the time. This was one of my first viral blog posts at the beginning.
• Diagnose Your Garage & Cure The Clutter: Understand why and how the clutter is forming, so you can cure it once and for all!
• My Epoxy Garage Floor: I love my epoxy garage floor – it feels so good, even 7 years later it still looks good.
• Setup A Donation Station: If your donation pile is adding to your clutter, give it a boundary by creating a donation station.

Over the course of my 20+counting year marriage, I’ve slowly come to accept that I’m the one in charge of the garage. It isn’t my favorite room and it’s never been a “fun” one to organize, but when it is done well, it really does make the home feel so much better. I’ve accepted it’s part of adulting – doing things I don’t like because it’s the right thing to do for my home and family. If I can do it, you can too!

From my home to yours,
Mary