Do you have to park one or more cars in the driveway because they wont fit in your garage? Has your garage become a catch-all during the winter? Do you have a major clutter problem there? If so, I have the solution for you. It is a 5-step process as follows: 1. Sort your belongings into four groupings.
a) Keep: Items you use on a regular basis. Store these on shelves, in cabinets, etc.
b) Storage: Must keep items that are not needed on a regular basis
c) Give away, donate or sell: Good enough to keep, but not by you.
d) Trash: Items not worth keeping. Discard them. 2. Eliminate the trash. 3. Offer the items that you want to give away to those, who may have a use for them. Donate many of these items to charitable organizations. Identify items that you can sell at a garage sale or through other means. Set them aside and decide on a date for the sale. 4. If you have room to store your must keep items, box them or bag them and put them in your storage. If they are too large, you may want to rent a storage unit to hold them. Be sure to make an inventory of the items in the storage containers and label them. 5. Your Keep items include items that need to be neatly stored until you need them and where you can return them when you have finished using them. If the proper place to store them is the garage, we can suggest ways to accomplish that task neatly and efficiently. In addition to conventional shelves, there are several ways to hang items on the walls or hang them from the ceiling. Items such as bikes, skis, golf bags, skates and racquets can hang on the walls of your garage. Bikes can also be hung from the ceiling on bike hoists. Other smaller sports equipment can be stored in baskets or racks that hang on the wall or stand on the floor. Larger items that are too bulky to store on the floor can be stored on a ceiling mounted rack, called a Heavy Lift, which is a 4-foot by 4-foot metal grid platform that can be cranked up and down like an awning while you stand on the floor. This is a great way to utilize spaces in your garage that would otherwise be wasted AND you do not have to climb a ladder to get to the items that you store there. (They come to you!) You can store up to 250lbs of evenly spaced items on this platform. If you have several small items that you want to store, but get to quickly when you need them, there are ready-made cabinets that can mount on the wall or be recessed into the wall between the joists. These cabinets provide a custom look for less than custom costs. When you have completed this Seasonal Cleaning of your garage, you will have a great satisfaction and be able to use the garage as a garage. [This article started out to be a Spring Cleaning Guide, but I decided that the summer weather was better for a cleaning project.] Happy Cleaning!!
Happy Organizing!! |
