Once the holidays are over, the focus tends to shift to how to improve things in the new year. Many people make resolutions to slim themselves down in the new year, but if you don’t have room to move around in your home garage, it may be the garage clutter that you need to slim down, not yourself. Improving your garage is a good start for both home and self-improvement in the coming year – with less clutter in the garage, you may finally be ready to renovate the rest of the house or have room to bring in an exercise machine. Take a look at a few ways to slim down your garage in 2017.
Dropping the Dead Weight
The first thing to do is get rid of the things that you don’t need anymore. Sure, the garage is a convenient place to store things that you need only rarely, like the holiday decorations that you get out once a year, and you don’t want to get rid of those. But if you’re not careful, a garage can also become a dumping ground for things that you weren’t ready to get rid of when you put them there, but that you really don’t need any more at all. Broken pieces of furniture that you don’t have the time to fix, old baby clothes or children’s toys that your children have long outgrown, outdated appliances that are missing important parts that are nowhere to be found, and other odds and ends are all taking up space that could be put to better use.
This is a great time to have a garage sale or gather up all of the items that somebody else might be able to use and donate them to a worthy cause. Cleaning out the garage may not be the most fun use of your time, but it’s well worth it. If you decide to sell your unwanted items, you can use the money toward something that will make your garage more organized and functional, like a brand-new wood or stainless steel workbench that you can use for building or crafting projects.
Toning Up
As anyone who’s ever lost a significant amount of weight knows, it’s not enough just to lose the fat, you also have to tone up the muscles if you really want to look better. On a similar note, it’s not enough to just get rid of the excess stuff in your garage – if you really want a trimmer, cleaner, more organized garage, you also have to improve the way that you store what’s left.
A sturdy set of shelves or cabinetscan help you get boxes and items off the floor and out of the way of your car and the foot traffic in your garage. Keep in mind that garage cabinets should have strong, deep shelves so that they can hold heavy and large items easily. A pegboard or slatwall addition to the wall of your garage can also help – you can hang small tools, like hammers and wrenches, or long-handled cleaning and yard tools, like brooms, shovels, and rakes. This keeps these items out of the way, but ensures that they’ll still be easy to find and grab when you need them in a hurry.
Garage Envy can help you make sure that your garage goes into 2017 looking better than ever before. Contact us for a free design consultation and estimate.{{cta(‘4e0ca529-46da-44c8-acce-dd815d6ec4bc’,’justifycenter’)}}
