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Archives for Garage
Learn to safely wrap cords, cables, and hoses
The magazine Fine Homebuilding has an informative and season-appropriate tutorial on its website “Wrapping cords and hoses: Learn how to avoid twists and kinks that can cause damage.”
This advice is perfect for garden and air hoses and extension cords that are ready to be stored for the cold months. There are three methods described in the article: a looped bundle, a loose chain, and a reverse coil.
If the pictures in the article don’t provide you with enough information, check out the instructional video that accompanies the article.
Also, I recommend that you take a few moments and check out the whole site — you can find many more helpful how-to solutions for your home on FineHomebuilding.com.
(via Apartment Therapy: LA)
Popularity: 9% [?]
Perfect time to organize your garage
Autumn is my favorite time of year. The temperature is just right for me, the leaves are beautiful, and Halloween and Thanksgiving are always fun. Fall also reminds me of the time of year when my mother would predictably ask her three sons to redd up the garage (for those of you not from western Pennsylvania, “to redd” means to clean). Cleaning out the garage consisted of moving everything in the garage into the driveway and then hosing off the garage floor. After we let the floor dry we moved everything back into the garage. It was always a dreaded task that wasted perfect backyard football weather.
The silly thing about the chore was that we hardly ever threw anything away or donated stuff to charity. I can still remember wheeling the wagon filled with old baseball equipment out to the yard and then right back into the garage again. Figuring out what needs to be trashed or donated is the first step to organizing your garage. With the car taking up so much real estate, you need to be organized with the space you do have at your disposal.
Using the walls for storage is key. You could easily go for the quick and cheap project with some strategically placed heavy duty hooks or you could go the storage system route. It probably depends on how much stuff you have or how much you actually use your garage.
A guest post by Lauren Halagarda over this past summer has some excellent tips that should help you out immensely. The garage is one of the most common areas for clutter to accumulate and it needs to be kept under control before the car no longer fits into its spot.
Popularity: 5% [?]
Find garage organizing inspiration from Elfa, Ikea, and Sears
Camping gear, bicycles, gardening supplies, lawn maintenance equipment, tools, automobile care products, and recycling bins are common goods found in garages across America in addition to automobiles. If the garage is well organized, it’s a lot easier to get the car into the space. But, for many residents, the garage is so haphazardly thrown together that a home’s garage includes everything except a car.
As the weather cools in the northern hemisphere, bringing your car into the garage is a more attractive idea than it was in warmer weather. The threat of early mornings spent scraping ice off of your windshield can be a great motivator to finally getting your garage into tip-top condition.
If you’re looking to improve the level of organization in your garage, you might want to check out the following storage solutions. Their prices vary, but all will help you to get your garage organized. A simple Google search with the phrase “garage organizing” will also yield many local companies that specialize in systems to tidy your space. The pictures are also great inspiration for how you can create your own systems for your garage if you aren’t interested in purchasing an out-of-the-box solution.
And if you missed it when it ran, be sure to check out our recent post on steps to take to organize your garage. Good luck!
Popularity: 16% [?]
The 20th annual Great American Yard Sale
Outside Chicago, in Aurora, Illinois, there was a wonderful event called the Great American Yard Sale this past weekend. The event is an inspiration for us at Unclutterer. Yard or garage sales are a great way to get rid of things you no longer want or need. They can also be a cheap alternative to buying a new product or a way to find an antique treasure.
The Great American Yard Sale is the brainchild of Bette and Rudy Krueger. What started out as your regular old yard sale has now become a sprawling 60,000 (!) square foot behemoth. All the proceeds go to six organizations providing services to homeless people in DuPage County.
My wife and I had a fairly successful yard sale last year and I thought we had tons of stuff. It was tiny in comparison to this yard sale extravaganza. I’d be curious to know if any of our Chicago area readers were able to attend or donate items? Heck, many people apparently flock to this thing from bordering states, so maybe someone from a Midwestern state can give us a firsthand report? From the ABC 7 report:
Over the years, the sale has generated such a reputation that shoppers attend, not only from the Chicago area, but from as far away as Florida, Tennessee, Iowa, Wisconsin and Indiana.
It sounds like a bargain hunter’s dream, and a great way to get rid of things you no longer need.
Popularity: 7% [?]
The Garagenous zone: Tips to organize your garage
I want to introduce everyone to Lauren Halagarda. She is a dear friend and the owner of The Organization Connection based in Arlington, VA. I hope you enjoy her fantastic advice on garage organization.
As we head into the dog days of summer, it’s a great time to organize the garage. It’s amazing how much stuff gets put in there, isn’t it? The garage was originally designed to store one family vehicle. Now, we often have more than one family vehicle, and, more often than not, none of our cars fit in the garage. It can appear that a garage is used to house everything but a vehicle! Consider yourself lucky (and organized) if you are actually able to park the car in your garage.
I am not making any guarantees that you will be able to park your car in the garage by the time you are done taking this advice, but I do promise some helpful tips for organizing it better.
First, determine what activities you would like to occur in the garage or what types of things will be stored in this area. For example, is your goal to park your car in this space or simply to park your lawnmower? Do you use it as a workshop for home improvements or does it need to serve as a laundry room? Do you wish to store your gardening supplies or your woodworking tools or kids toys and sporting equipment in this space? Make a list and write down your goals for this space. By going through this exercise, you will be able to identify zones for your garage that work for you and your family.
Next, set aside some time to start sorting small areas or containers within the garage. Break this one seemingly endless project of organizing the garage into small, manageable tasks. Set a timer for 15 minutes or an hour, whatever works for you. I highly recommend against trying to do it all in one day, so that you don’t yourself up for failure. (An exception to this would be if you have help.)
As you sort through your things, ask yourself questions. Do I love it? Do I need it? When is the last time (or how frequently) I used it? Is it outgrown, broken, and otherwise obsolete? If I donated it to charity, would someone get good use out of it?
Store items off the ground. The garage can be damp, and accidental spills are possibilities. When you get to the organizing stage of your project, protect your belongings by storing them off the ground.
Use Vertical Space. When you can’t expand out into the room, try expanding upward. Use the walls for storage. Learn about slat, grid, shelving, and cabinet storage systems to help you make better use of your wall space.
Be kind to the environment. Be sure to dispose of paint, chemicals and other hazardous materials properly. Check out your local recycling guidelines.
Assign items a home. Now that you have sorted items into their prospective zones or categories, try to store them accordingly. Also, store items conveniently. Children’s toys should be stored within their reach. The easier it is to put something away, the more likely it is to get done.
Create Toolkits. Use various-size containers or buckets as toolkits. Home improvement stores sell jackets for buckets to store different types of tools efficiently and you can pick up your “Fix it” bucket and take it where you need it. You can create a: “Car Wash” bucket with soap, sponge, towels, wax, window wipes; “Wall Repair” kit containing a drywall knife, spackle knives, tape; “Electrical Repair” kit containing wire clippers, an outlet, switch, etc. Don’t go crazy and create one for any and every job around the house, just the tasks that you perform on a regular basis.
Label Everything. Do yourself and your family a favor and label everything. Not only will this help you and others identify what is in boxes and containers, but labeling shelves and cabinets can also help encourage others (and yourself) to put the item back in it’s home.
Use the ceiling. There are many tools on the market that utilize the assistance of a lift mechanism, whether it is a bike rack or shelving unit. These can be raised when not in use and lowered to provide easy access.
Popularity: 17% [?]
