Garage Organizing Do's and Don'ts

Take a look in most people’s garages and you’ll quickly understand why minimalist author and speaker Joshua Becker’s journey toward minimalism began in his garage.

As he tells the story, he and his young son were cleaning out the garage on a beautiful spring day. As they unearthed toys from the rubble, the boy didn’t understand why dad wouldn’t leave the messy garage to play with him. That’s when Becker realized that the excess stuff he owned was making it hard for him to do what was important to him—spend quality time with his family.

It’s easy to ignore the stuff piling up in the garage because we’re not walking around it on a day-to-day basis. Even if we do park our car in the garage—and many of us don’t!—we can shut the door on the piles as we walk into the house.

According to an Impulse Research survey, 24% of homeowners are embarrassed to leave their garage doors open.

When you’re ready to stop closing the garage door on your stuff, use my CALM organizing method (Clear, Assess, Locate, Modify) to sort through your things. Then apply these garage-specific Do’s and Don’ts.

DO
Divide your garage into zones.

• Categorize what’s stored in your garage and then map out zones for each category: tools/repairs, car accessories, sports equipment, lawn care, etc.

Separate by season.

• Group items according to when you use them. Locate them in the part of the garage that will be easiest to access in that season or swap locations by season. In the spring you can rotate the snow blower from the front of the garage to the back and bring the lawn mower from back to front. Lawn toys and bikes should be stored near the doors so they can be grabbed quickly on a summer’s day.

Use specially-designed storage systems.

• Keep the garage tidy by installing wall racks with specialty hooks to store everything from brooms to bikes while keeping everything within reach and off the ground.
• Garage cabinets are designed to withstand fluctuating temperatures and humidity levels so they’ll last longer than repurposed kitchen or bathroom cabinets, which can rot, rust, and fall apart.
• Clear, weather-tight bins are the best choice for storing smaller items.​

DON’T
Aim for a perfect garage.

• An Instagram-worthy garage looks great, but it’s tough to maintain the look in this hard-working space. The main point of a garage is function. The goal is to store things that you really use and to be able to find them easily.

Use the garage as the dump.

• If your habit has been to say, “I need to get rid of this, so I’m going to stick it in the garage,” then you’ll need to make a new habit. Don’t let your cast-offs pile up, get dirty, and attract critters. Instead, make an appointment with the local dump or call a junk hauler to get that stuff out of your garage.

Store precious items, mementos, or fabric items in the garage.

• Unless your garage is fully climate-controlled and alarmed, it’s not the right place to store things that need a moisture-free, temperature-regulated environment that is secure.

Your garage is a space to store stuff for active living: gardening tools, sports equipment, beach gear, and more. Now that you’ve minimized the piles and organized your garage, you can reclaim your active life!

As Joshua Becker says, "It feels better to do stuff than to have stuff.”