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Do you suffer from Seasonal Garage Anxiety Disorder?

August 10, 2010 by Rick Scully

suspending shelves Labour Day will soon be upon us, which means summer is drawing to an end … but that’s not all. Any day now, thousands of Canadians will be hit with a common ailment that we at Garage TailorsGarage like to call Seasonal Garage Anxiety Disorder.

What are the symptoms? Anxiety. Will the former glory of your garage ever be restored following the care-free months of summer? If you’re like most individuals, there are kids’ bikes, hose pipes, shovels, rakes and planters strewn across your garage floor. I’d even venture to guess that a few of you have a pile of top soil sitting on a blue tarp in the very spot you once parked your car.

All of this is very well, but the seasons are-a-changing. In just a few weeks, the leaves will begin to fall upon the beautiful, waxy finish of your vehicle. If cars could talk, yours would be saying, “I’m worth a lot. Protect me. Please let me reclaim my space!”

Clearing out the garage is a daunting task – we understand – so to make it easier we’ll be sharing a few tips in our next post. Be sure to check them out.

From the Ground Up – Thinking About Your Garage Floor

May 15, 2010 by Rick Scully

Keeping the biggest room in the house clean and tidy starts with the foundation – in this case the floor. And yet most people don’t think about how difficult a basic concrete floor makes cleaning, especially when cars or powertools drip oil, or someone spills paint.

You know what I mean…

You have cracks in the concrete floor. (You wouldn’t step over a crack in the kitchen floor, would you?)
Rain, winter salt and dirt are wearing down the surface. (You protect your dining room floor with a coat of varnish. Doesn’t the garage deserve the same?)
Dust and grime seem to generate out of thin air. (Actually, they come from the concrete which releases dust as it ages.)

By leaving your concrete floor bare you make keeping the rest of the garage neat and tidy difficult.

So, what to do? Come back for the next post to find out what a options exist for decent garage flooring and what fixing the floor will do for the rest of the garage.

Meanwhile, check out our Garage Tailors Garage transformations to see what options exist for your floor.

Surefire Garage Organization Ideas

April 29, 2010 by Rick Scully

In the last post, we gave you the basic plan for any sort of organizing project – get rid of what you don’t want or use, sort what’s left and create garage storage systems that will work best for your needs.

This time around we’re expanding that quick tip into a full how-to:

On a nice dry day, pull everything out of the garage and lay it out on the driveway or in the backyard.
The things that are broken and unfixable – throw them out right away.
Broken and fixable but unwanted things go in a give-away pile.
Add to that pile anything else that you don’t want or won’t use.
Look at what’s left and decide on categories and group like items with like.
Give the garage a good cleaning and put everything back in, still grouped together.

While you do that, we’ll be here working on the next issue of Garage View from Garage Tailors where we’ll talk about the difference between DIY and expert organizing solutions for your garage and what it means to you.

Spring Fever and the Itch to Organize

April 28, 2010 by Rick Scully

Spring and flowers have sprung and you know what that means – time for a good airing out of the garage.

Get the outdoor season started out right with a garage that has space for the car, bikes, sports equipment and even gardening tools.

But how to create efficient garage storage? Ideas you have, and plenty of them. Time and the right garage storage systems, however, are lacking somewhat.

For the second part, that’s what people like us are around for.

As for time, there’s plenty you can do and it’ll take just a day. Then you can call in a expert in garage organization products and relax.

It starts with tossing and giving away what you don’t need any more, and ends with sorting what’s left into like-with-like piles of stuff.

Stay tuned for the next post to find out the detailed process. And in the meantime, check out what Mary R did with all the stuff in her basement. The same principles apply to garages just as easily.

The Secret to Taming Garage Storage Chaos

April 19, 2010 by Rick Scully

In almost every home, garage storage is a fancy phrase that means “opening the door and tossing it into the void.” We know the garage is designed to keep the car safe from theft, vandalism and the weather and yet we fill it up, especially in winter when piles of not-yet-recycled Christmas boxes hide our outdoor tools or we can’t even get into the garage for the sports equipment that has created a nest for itself just inside the door.

It’s enough to cause despair of ever having a well-kept yard or putting the car in there again one day.

I know that feeling – I see it everywhere I go. It’s called “seasonal garage anxiety disorder” and it can defy all attempts to create garage storage systems.

But don’t worry, there’s something you can do that will make your garage infinitely more functional. Something that you can do right now. Something that will help you figure out what you really want.

(And no, it’s not pick up the phone and call us in to do some garage storage design – although that will help too).

Change how you think about your garage.

We all see the space as something outside the house, something not related to the other rooms in the house, and yet that is exactly what it is.

A room.

Just as you would never let your kitchen get so full of stuff that you can’t enter it, if you think of your garage as another room in the house with its own purpose you’ll stop seeing it as a dumping ground. So why force one of the most valuable assets we own (our car) to sit outside of the room built specifically to house it?

You’ll be amazed at how quickly you’ll start throwing things out and finding homes for the rest when you make this simple mental shift.

And to help you make this change in thought patterns go check out our Frequently Asked Questions section to find out how you can start tossing out the junk and reorganizing what you have left.

Garage TailorsGarage Applications – Locker

May 29, 2008 by Rick Scully

A Locker

Ellen G was desperate. Her son was a sports fanatic but an untidy – and in her words “smelly” – sportsman stemming from all the equipment that he used, including:

hockey sticks,
skates,
helmets, and
pads.

As well as football gear including:

yet another helmet,
more pads, and
another complete outfit.

He also kept

tennis rackets, and
basketballs

(Thank goodness the basketball hoop was outside the house).

Ellen G finally had to let her son use the spare room as “his locker” but the more space he had the more “stuff” he accumulated and the worse the mess got.

Finally Ellen G stand it no longer. She contacted us and within 3 days we had everything off the floors and on the walls – everything was visible and easy to have access to.

Although her son was at first furious with his mother for touching his stuff, when he saw how much more space he had – he had a change of heart without having to have a change of habits.

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