While the garage is one of your home’s greatest assets, a place to not only store and protect your vehicles but to organize a wealth of important tools and supplies, it can quickly become a cluttered disaster. Maintaining a level of order in your garage can yield a multitude of benefits, including increasing your home’s value.
While cleaning and organizing the garage may seem too overwhelming to tackle, it boils down to three important steps. Follow this game plan from organization expert Marie Kondo to get your garage into tip-top shape.
Sell, donate or discard. Many garages are such a jumble of miscellaneous items that we often lose track of what we actually have. The first step, therefore, is to meticulously go through all the belongings currently housed in your garage and separate them into piles: keep, sell, donate and discard. While there may be tools and garden items that you no longer need, they could be very valuable to someone else, so post them online or host a literal garage sale to find them a new home. And for those items that are beyond use, don’t hold onto them—put them in the discard pile.
Arrange by category. The key to garage organization is grouping like items together. So once you’ve gotten rid of the things you no longer need, arrange everything you’re keeping by category and store them accordingly. Common groupings might include garden supplies, sports equipment, tools and cleaning materials. This way, when you’re looking for something, you’ll know exactly which area to go to.
Break emotional bonds. Odds are, there are things you’ve squirreled away in your garage simply because you’re not ready to get rid of it. Garages often become receptacles of belongings that have sentimental value, but are no longer used, such as the tricycle your grown child once used or the rusty tools passed down from your grandfather. Consider whether the time has finally come to part with items that are taking up space and deteriorating in the garage.
Breaking down your garage clean-up into these three buckets will help make the job less overwhelming and have your space clutter-free and organized in no time.
