Weekend Garage Organization

We recently bought and moved into our home. I love the house but it is not yet our home.  It's cluttered, unorganized, and has to many white walls. But  I love the layout, love the concept, love the location and LOVE the potential it has. So, on a budget I have been slowly transforming it. Let's just say my husband has a love/hate relationship with Pinterest!!

This weekend was the garage. It was a standard 2-car garage. When we bought it there were a total of 3 shelves, with one being so high i needed a ladder to reach anything on it. As any home buyer knows, it had also became our storage area. Just stack that here was a common thing. So this past weekend I decided that we were going to concur it...

I decided that we needed a simple work bench. My husband does not have a lot of tools but just enough that we would like a place that it could be organized. I also opted to install a peg board for more organization opportunities.

Organizing & Cleaning
(Holy cow where did all of this stuff come from?!?!)

First step was pulling everything out & establishing the "honey do's" 

I sorted into piles:

• Outdoor Fun - Lawn games, balls, etc.
• Fishing (my husband is convinced he should be a professional so we have a lot of stuff)
• Golf/Skiing - We have a lot but it is a bulky item that has to be stored
• Hunting
• Tools
• Maintenance - Bug spray, round up, trash bags, etc
• Paint- This is another bulky item that you have to store
• Car Maintenance

Pull EVERYTHING out. It you leave it in there all you are going to move it around, store stuff on top of it and be right back where you were when you started. The key, is to have your trash can front and center during this process. If your family hasn't used it in the last year... Toss it!!

During this process, I sent my husband out to start working on the tool bench. We work well together but always have a different idea of how something should be. My goal with these projects are to get it down and still love each other afterwards :)

Second step is to clean...

• Sweep! Use a smaller broom to get into the small tight areas.
• Sweep the walls. Seems crazy but getting the spider webs down is a must!
• Spray every crease with bug spray. The bottom of the wall where it meets the floor, the corners, and the ceiling creases. 

Third step is to take a step back and look

For me it was looking at my biggest items I had to store and determine where would be the best place for things. When doing this always think of hanging things on the walls, either with screws or hooks. This will be a life saver for you.

• Bikes, hung on the wall with hooks. I had to remove the front tire so the garage would close

• Extra golf bags, hung on wall with hooks. This is one of my favorites, they are out of the way and are great decoration!
• Waders, hung on hooks
• Cornhole tables, using plywood cut a 50"x 4" piece.  Double screwed in to the studs. Measured 12" in from one side and screwed 2 2 1/2 screws right next to each other (maybe an inch apart). Repeated on the other side. 

• Plastic Tubs!! These are amazing. I put all of our golf shoes and accessories in one, put our miscellaneous outdoor fun stuff in one, camping accessories in another. 
• Wall hooks to hang shovels, brooms, snow shovel, rakes!

Fourth step for me was the work bench

I wish I had measurements for you and exact of how we laid it out to finalize, but as I said before there are times when I just have to let my husband do it, without me telling him what to do.

What I did tell him was that I wanted it to fit in one of our corners, I wanted it a little over nine feet long to match the space, I wanted to hang a peg board above it and it needed a shelf. We used the 3 randomly placed shelves in the garage to give the area more storage space!

He did great! I painted the S on the peg board with acrylic paint just to give it a little touch!!

When all said and done, I am so happy we took the time to do it. Every time I go to open my garage now to park, it feels like home!!