So I’m back. :) We are having a much better day so far. Antibiotics are here and we are determined to get rid of all sickness. Crossing my fingers that it skips me! We all know that when mom goes down, the ship sinks fast. :)
If you remember my 2016 to-organize list one of my top priorities this year is to get our garage in order. I titled this post “Garage Organization (take one!)” because there will be several posts in this series. I’m getting this garage organized (REALLY organized) once and for all and I’m taking you all along on my journey!
I wish I had more pictures of just how messy my garage has been for the past two years since we moved into our new house. Quite the dumping ground! The first thing I did was move our cars out of the garage and pull everything into the center. I swept the sides and the perimeter of the garage floor and then went through each item deciding what to keep and what to send packing. I took the picture above after I had gone through about half of our stuff.
This is what things look like now. I like to call this phase 1 of my garage organization “categorized clutter.” :) Definitely a huge improvement but no where near finished!
I’ll show you a few pics of where we’re at. That door you are looking at with the red rug is the door into our mudroom (which is still organized btw! Hooray!). To the left of it is our girls’ pet tortoises.
The girls decorated the wall above them. These tortoises are spoiled rotten! They get home made Halloween costumes, Christmas socks and all sorts of treats and attention. Cracks me up.
I try to keep this wall clear so that the kids can get to the door to our side yard easily.
We have no storage in this garage (that’s about to change!) so for now I just clumped similar things together. All of the bikes are together and the Barbie Jeep is finding a new home soon.
Then I piled all of our camping stuff together in this corner.
This middle section is a little scary. Basically it’s a lot of stuff that my husband needs to go through. Things I wanted to toss but didn’t dare. :)
Most of this stuff is going. It’s the last of the mismatched furniture from our previous house that we don’t need anymore.
All of our paint is consolidated in this corner. I haven’t sorted through that mess yet!
See what I mean by categorized clutter!? :)
Then just ladders and other odds and ends along this side wall. I need to sell my beloved BOB baby joggers (they are my favorite brand btw if you need one!), but I don’t have the heart to go through with it! SO many memories of pushing my babies in them. But they are taking up space and we just don’t use them anymore.. {sigh}. I need to toughen up and let them go.
This is our Central Vac Unit. I just dusted it off and organized the extra parts/cord.
So that’s where we are now! Phase one is complete! It’s actually the hardest phase because it involves just getting started. If you want to organize your garage but are feeling overwhelmed by it all, break the process down into steps. Pick a day to pull everything into one area of your garage and sort through things. Get rid of everything you don’t need/use. Then categorize similar things together. It’s a good beginning! Phase two of my garage organization is coming soon!
*For more garage organization ideas you can check out these past posts:
GARAGE ORGANIZATION IN OUR PREVIOUS HOUSE – The Barbie Jeep and Jogging Strollers make an appearance in this post too! Definitely time to say good-bye. :)
SHOE ORGANIZATION IN OUR PREVIOUS HOUSE
I love this post. Can’t wait for an update.
We’ve been in our current house for a year next week and our garage is just starting to take shape. We are nearly at the point where we can fit one car in there!
I’ve definitely had to break the job down into smaller sections – it was just so overwhelming otherwise.
Thank you Jamie! I know.. the garage is such an overwhelming project! It definitely takes time. This is our year! We’ll finish together. Fingers crossed. ;) xo
I’m happy to hear that your kiddos are on the mend! You are a brave, brave woman! Ha, ha! Honestly, though, I don’t think your garage looks that out of control. Now my garage…that’s scary. I have a feeling once you get some storage units and hooks and what not, this space will look as amazing as your main house! I know you said you did work ahead of the pictures you shared, though. Can I just say, the decorated wall for the tortoises made me smile wide. SO sweet. I love the picture with a little guy on the skateboard. hee, hee! Looks like you made an awesome first step or two. You are amazing tackling what can be a big project (and smart for letting the hubby go through his stuff). Looking forward to seeing the progress you make. :)
Thank you Jeanne! Oh my word.. I did A LOT of work before I took those pics. I should have documented it better but a lot of times I was working on it in the evening with little light. It will be nice to have done! I’m anxious to pull my car in and feel calm! And I know.. that turtle on a skate board cracks me up every day. Ha! :) xo
Ugh, just seeing this is making me simultaneously itch to get my garage organized and dread the whole process. I look forward to the end result, not the in-between. I do a ton of DIY projects so we only park one car in the garage, the other half is my workshop. That is a massive mess or wood, wood chips, paint, and furniture in line to be redone. I do adore that the turtle wall is decorated in your garage, so cute!
Thanks Emily! Oh my word. I know how you feel! I was trying to get the motivation to work on it more today and just couldn’t. Garage organization is NOT fun. But yes.. SO nice to pull in to an organized space every day! Best of luck with yours! :)
Let me know when you sell the chairs. I have been looking for those in black for months.
Are you in southern Cal Janell?
Yes, I’m in the South Bay.
Best of luck with your garage organization! May I suggest a use for your old paint? If you have paint that you no longer need for touch-ups etc. and there is a decent amount left, consider donating it to a high school theatre program. I help build sets at my daughter’s high school and the arts doesn’t get any funding. (And this is common, unfortunately.) They’d love to get your old paint!
Great idea! We are keeping ours for touch ups but I’ll keep that in mind for when we are done with them!
Hey Erin, look forward to seeing this. one dumb question though, how come you didn’t build storage when you built the house or did you want to wait to see what you wanted to store in there etc and how best to utitlise the space?
Not a dumb question at all Amanda! Two reasons.. one – yes – I wanted to live with the space and figure out what we needed. Also when we moved in our garage was so full of old furniture, boxes to go through, left over building supplies, etc. It was a total mess! I wanted to be able to take my time going through it all and cleaning it out. It’s only taken 2 1/2 years. Ha! ;) xo
So glad to hear someone else can’t part with BOB! I still have another year or two with mine but I’m already dreading the day I “should” get rid of it. Maybe I’ll just bronze it. Can you imagine in 100 years or so when antique stores might carry BOBs?
Oh my word.. let’s bronze them! Never thought of that! Ha! :)
Do you mind sharing the pretty gray color on your garage walls? I’m having my garage painted next week and I like the gray, as opposed to plain white. Thank you.
It’s the same color as my main house color – “Seattle” by Frazee. :)
Great start ! Your garage is huge ! How many cars can you park there ? :))))
Thanks Bessie! Four if we had nothing else in there. ;) xo
I don’t envy you Erin! Can’t wait to see how it turns out! Garage organization always takes a long time because there’s just so much stuff today. Your garage looks pretty already since it’s fully painted and has an epoxy coating on the floor. Mine is painted however I am looking forward to doing some type of epoxy treatment on the floor.
My favorite things to use for organizing garages are the Origami racks. They are rolling racks and have no assembly required. You just pull them out of the box, flip the bar over, latch it and you are done. I have about 5 of these and they are fantastic. If you need to move them, they just roll out for cleaning. I use Sterilite 66 quart bins on them and each Origami rack holds 8 bins. I have a separate category for each rack. One holds the Christmas tree, one holds Christmas decor, one holds home decor, one holds memories, one holds garage stuff and another one holds all of my son’s special needs stuff like wheelchair parts, medical supplies, etc. I order mine from HSN and they deliver right to your home saving a trip. They also offer them at Home Depot under a different name. I have everything organized in my garage to a tee except for all the screws. I need to go through that and label them by sizes. That is a project for another day! My rule for garages is to have nothing on the floor at all!
Sue you need to e-mail me a pic of your garage! I would love to see how you have it organized. Sounds amazing! Thanks for the tip on the Origami racks. They sound like such a smart storage idea. And you are spot on.. garage organization takes FOREVER. Can’t wait to check this one off my list! xo
Are those red plants behind the strollers poinsettias? Are the real? If not, where did you get them?
Yes! Poinsettias. They are fake and were from Home Depot. I put them in my front planters every December. :)
Hi Erin – are your black chairs for sale? I sent you an email. Not sure if you got it. Thank you.
Hi Lori! Just e-mailed you! xo
You do not even want to see our garage! That is where all the boxes I didn’t need to unpack in our rental house went to live. Among other “junk” that I have nowhere to put. I was so glad when I was able to make a relatively wide enough path to walk through to get to the trashcan. And then a couple days later, my husband brought our riding lawn mower over from our old house, and there went my pathway. Now I have to climb over the mower to get to the trash. Ugh! Not to mention, we’re storing some stuff for our friends who live in an apartment complex. It’s ridiculous. Can’t wait to have storage again!
You are in survival mode for a while Joanna! Hang in there! Good things are coming. ;) xo
What kind of paint did you use on the garage floor?
It’s epoxy Kathy! :)