Mission Organization: the Garage

Since we cleaned up the basement and then remodeled the kitchen, the garage has become a dumping ground with no semblance of cleanliness or organization.   We had a very busy month of March so we set a goal to tackle the garage the first weekend of April.   We have a two car garage but park only one car in the garage so the left side doesn’t have to remain clear for a vehicle.   One day we’d like to paint,  put up shelving,  and stain or paint the concrete floor for a cleaner, uniform look.    For this round, our goal was just to clean it up (there were tons of spider webs and leaves everywhere), get rid of the garbage, and put our old kitchen cabinets to use for storage.

The view from the right side (the side where we park the car).

Straight ahead.

And the little nook on the right side.

We saved a few of the old cabinets from the kitchen (and we gave the rest away).  The old pantry won’t fit in the garage at its current height so we’d have to modify it to use it as it was used in the kitchen (You can see them as they were in the kitchen before here).   A. did not want to make modifications in this phase so we kept the pantry vertical and made a hutch out of it with two of the old upper cabinets on top.

I am using it to store all the paint cans and painting paraphenalia I’ve accumulated along with lots of other stuff.   We’re reusing bins and buckets to store like related things i.e. all the plumbing stuff is in one bucket, all the electrical stuff is in another bucket.

There are some items we plan to be free of soon: exercise equipment and old doors, but for now they are still in the garage, just leaned against the wall, out of the way.


I have to say, I was pretty uninspired when I first started and wasn’t really sure what to deal with first.  A. helped me get moving by just removing everything from the garage.  Sometimes that’s the way you have to do it:  take everything out, clean, put the necessary items back in a somewhat organized fashion.  We finished this in one Saturday afternoon.   We know where things are now and it definitely feels much better to park in a cleaner space.

Have you done any spring cleaning?
-J