How To Use Your Garage Space Efficiently

The garage is a great place to keep your cars. Inside the garage your cars keep cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter. The garage is also a great place to keep a lot of your stuff. Inside the garage smelly garbage won’t stink up your house, nor will dirty gardening tools track much through your carpets. The problem is that with garages getting smaller and smaller, there is less and less place to keep both your cars and your stuff. With a little creative thinking, it’s actually easy to get everything you need to into your garage.

Wall Space

The walls in your garage are not simply meant for artwork that would be tacky anywhere else in your home, you can use your garage walls to help store your things and keep them organized. Storing things on your garage walls can be done as easily as hammering a few nails into the studs to hang things on. If you want to get more complicated with your garage wall storage system, you can always buy a hanging system from the local hardware store. Either way, having a place to hang things such as gardening tools, ladders, extension cords and hoses will help get these things up and out of the way.

Floor Space

Shelving is a great way to use the same floor space over and over again. With a sturdy set of shelves, a single layer of boxes, bins and assorted other stuff can be stacked one on top of the other. You can also use the same floor space for your car by having a shelving unit overhang the hood of your car, getting you those needed extra inches so you can close the garage door. If you’re going to have shelves overhang your hood, however, you are going to want to make sure the shelves are strong enough and that nothing is going to come crashing down on your car.

Just like the systems you used to organize your garage wall space, you can either build your shelves on your own or buy a modular unit from the hardware store. Buying a ready-made shelving unit is the right choice for those who are not very handy, and they can usually be put together quickly, giving you time for other jobs around the house. Building your own shelves will not only give you a sense of satisfaction of doing the job yourself, but you will also be able to customize your shelving to best optimize the garage floor space you have available.

Ceiling Space

A lot of us tend to forget that there’s a whole other storage space in our garages that’s way over our heads. The garage ceiling and rafters provide an ideal place to store seasonal items that only come out once a year for short periods of time. If you built your own shelving unit in the garage, then you should have no problems building a similar style of shelf over top of your garage doors. Most garages will have a couple of feet between the door rails and the ceiling, and some homeowners are lucky enough to have up to 5 or 6 feet of added storage space. This is a great place to store Christmas decorations, skis, extra lumber and the lawnmower. Putting oversized hooks into the rafters will also give you a place to hang your bikes in the winter and sleds in the summer.

By taking a look at your garage and thinking creatively about how to use the space, you will be surprised by how much stuff you can actually get in there and still park the cars. By using wall, floor and ceiling space wisely, not only will you create space, but you will also keep your stuff organized. Being able to store stuff in the garage is great, but being able to find it again when you need it is sure delight.