A garage can be the ultimate multipurpose room -- the place where you have your workshop, where recycling bins are kept, where garden equipment and supplies are stored, sports equipment is organized and, not least, where your car and perhaps your ATV are parked.
Any garage is a balancing act for an organizer. So many things that must be accessible for regular use. And in most garages, so few places to really put things.
"If your garage is cluttered and disorganized, it really impacts the quality of your life," says Andrew Neary, a Toronto-based professional organizer who runs the website www.organizing-toronto.com. "You won't find what you need when things are buried in piles. Your belongings will get lost in the clutter and you'll wind up buying many things twice. The clutter may even cause you to trip and fall, so your health may be at risk. And you'll certainly feel stress and anxiety just from having everything in chaos."
Organizing, Neary says, is really very simple.
You simply empty out the space where you plan to store things, get rid of everything that you don't really need, and then, with a careful eye, figure out what must go where so that everything goes back in an organized way -- a place for everything, and everything in its place.
To have a place for everything, you will really need units for storage. And Neary definitely has his favourite brand -- Gladiator GarageWorks, an organizing system available from Sears Canada that is modular and can grow as your needs change.
GarageWorks is something you can custom design, Neary says. If you choose carefully, all your car care items and tools, sports gear, garden equipment, and everything else you keep in your garage will have its own place and your garage will have a sense of order.
But GarageWorks isn't necessary, he adds. There is all sorts of equipment sold by Canadian Tire and Home Depot that can do the same jobs -- for example, track panels on which you can attach hooks, offering a customizable way to store ladders, rakes, hoses, bicycles and other equipment on a wall.
Neary likes many Rubbermaid products, which he says offer good value -- especially the Sport Gear Storage Station, which can hold hockey sticks, helmets, baseball bats and skateboards with ease. For car care products, he recommends the Rubbermaid Heavy-Duty Resin Base Cabinet, perfect for holding oil, polishes, wax and antifreeze.
For hand tools, he recommends the Go Rhino Universal Hand Tool Rack, a compact, wall-mounted organizer with holes of different size that can hold wrenches, pliers, screwdrivers, paint brushes and other small items.
If the garage is attached to the house, then Neary suggests you create a recycling centre just inside the entry from the home. The recycling centre has to be near the entry or you won't use it nearly as often, he says. You just stack inexpensive bins for each category of recycling -- and pick larger bins than you expect, because you'll need the extra space if you miss a trash pickup, which happens to everyone.
For bicycles, particularly if there are several, Neary suggests bicycle brackets to hold them on the wall.
Neary is a bit hesitant to recommend overhead storage systems. In principle, they're excellent, he says. However, in garages with finished ceilings, he has sometimes found that home handymen, in installing the anchors, have punctured pipes above the garage. They are also a bit dangerous to access.
"These hanging baskets, for me, are tertiary storage, fantastic if well installed, but best for things you'll only have to access maybe once a year, like Halloween decorations and Christmas ornaments."
Though he has his favourite brands, Neary says more and more very satisfactory products are coming out all the time, and a walk through Canadian Tire, Home Depot or any hardware store will turn up useful items that will help anyone organize their garage.
"You don't have to be Martha Stewart about it," he says. "You just have to get organized -- and you'll know you are when you can find everything you need. It's really that simple."
Don't try for a Saturday morning miracle, he says. Work in 45-minute intervals. Take breaks. Then go back at it, over several days.
If you're kind to yourself and keep working, soon you'll have a garage in which you can find everything quickly and which will look nice -- as all organized spaces do.
-- Postmedia News
