How Are You Using Your Garage?
The three main things people use their garage for are:
Parking
Storage
Multi-purpose
Parking:
If you only use your garage for parking, congratulations - that means you’re organized and have room in your house for everything. You are also a unicorn.
Do you need to park a car there? If not, we are going to talk about other uses for your garage below.
The one thing we can all agree on is to not use your garage for a dumping ground for anything you can’t fit in your house or anything you don’t know what to do with.
Whether it’s a one car garage you get with your condo or multiple cars, using your walls will change your life. (If you want to see how, check out our blog post from November, “How to Be Organized, Straight from Our CEO's Mouth”).
Storage:
We’ve made a list of what you should and shouldn’t store in your garage:
What to store:
Extra paint/tile/flooring
Tools
Sports equipment
Holiday/party supplies/decor
Bulk paper products
Emergency/earthquake kits/water
Memories
What not to store:
Clothing
Bedding
Food
Photos/film
Electronics that need to be kept free from the elements
Artwork
Cardboard - anything in cardboard (bugs love it)
I’m sure everyone has other things they would like to store in their garage. Ask yourself, do you mind if the elements get to these things? If you do care, make sure you have proper protection (eg. weather-tight bins) to store it properly.
Multi purpose:
To a certain extent, garages will always be a multi use room if you are using it to park vehicles and/or have laundry facilities etc. It’s typically where you enter the house. (Ask me about creating a “drop zone/communication station” just inside or outside of the house.)
Exercise
Laundry Facilities
Arts & Crafts
Storage
Game Room
Workbench
One of OFab’s services is designing intricate garage storage solutions. As we’ve said before, we use Elfa shelving whenever possible.
Do yourself a favor - if there is any way for you to get to The Container Store before February 15, they are having 30% off all Elfa shelving solutions, including installation.
