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Five Ways to Maximize Garage Storage

May 27, 2014 by Rick Scully

There are a few basic steps that will help you create a neat, organized garage. Last time we discussed the first step, creating related zones in your garage. We discovered why it makes sense to create separate zones for auto accessories, household supplies, garden tools, garbage and recycling bins, tools and workstations and sporting equipment. Now let’s discuss how to keep the items in each zone neat and organized by using a variety of tools and accessories designed just for this purpose.

Slatwall – The Key to Getting Everything Off of Your Garage Floor

Maybe you’ve never heard of slatwall, but you’ve probably seen it in your local retail store. It wasn’t the item being sold. However, it was likely used as the base for the baskets and hooks that held merchandise. Slatwall (also called slotwall and slat board) isn’t limited to use by retailers anymore. It is frequently used in garages as a hanging system that enables homeowners to get everything off of the garage floor.

Slatwall comes in panels which are installed on the walls of the garage. The grooves in the slatwall hold hooks, baskets and other organizational products and give the homeowner the freedom to easily move these items as needed.

Your local big-box store might sell a basic slatwall system. However, slatwall sold there is typically composed of MDF. It doesn’t have the durability and weight-bearing capacity of sturdier, PVC-based slatwall available to professional garage renovation specialists and other contractors.

Getting professional-grade slatwall installed provides the base for organization in each zone of your garage.

Baskets and Hooks

Once professional-grade slatwall panels are installed on your garage walls, corresponding baskets and hooks can be inserted into the grooves. These baskets and hooks will provide wall storage for everything ranging from garden tools and sports equipment to snow shovels and bicycles.

Just think of all of the possibilities!

Rather than the garage being a dumping ground for everyone’s in-line skates or softball equipment, each item can be hung neatly in its designated spot. You won’t spend half an hour searching for your snow brush when the first snow of winter hits unexpectedly. Instead, you can walk right over to the automotive zone in your garage and take the snow brush of its hook.

Best of all, since the hooks and baskets can be easily moved, you can adjust the configuration to better accommodate the items you’re storing at various times of the year.

Shelving

Slatwall can also accommodate shelving. Like the corresponding baskets and hooks, the shelving used with slatwall can also be relocated at any time. This provides endless possibilities for storage on your garage walls.

Shelving can be particularly useful when it comes to storing window washing fluid, automotive fluids, household chemicals or flower pots. Create shelves high on the wall to store items that should be kept out of the reach of pets and children. Create low shelves for items that should be easily accessible to children.

Overhead Storage Solutions

One area frequently overlooked for garage storage is the space overhead. However, with a bit of imagination and essential expertise, the overhead space in your garage can safely store household items that aren’t frequently accessed, like seasonal tires, holiday decorations or roof racks used for carrying luggage or sporting equipment. Bicycles, kayaks, leftover wood or siding and other large, bulky items can also be stored overhead with the right custom solutions.

Overhead storage solutions can be tricky to handle on your own. A variety of factors must be considered: height, clearance and weight-bearing capacity, to name a few. If you aren’t completely confident about designing and installing heavy overhead storage solutions, contract a professional garage renovation specialist to handle a job of this magnitude instead.

Custom-built Storage Solutions

You can purchase any number of pre-built storage cabinets, workbenches and overhead shelves for your garage at your local big-box store. However, you’re limited to the sizes and configurations that they have available. If you have unique challenges in your garage, like curved walls or odd spaces, you might find it difficult to incorporate pre-made storage cabinets into your space. However, a garage renovation specialist can assess your space and custom-build cabinetry and workbenches to perfectly fit your lifestyle as well as the unique spaces of your garage.

An organized, functional garage is only a few steps away. Start by creating related storage zones. Then, give everything a specified place within its zone. And finally, be sure to return items to their designated spaces after each use.

Want the gorgeous garage, but don’t quite have the time to make it happen? Contact a professional garage renovation specialist to explore the possibilities.

Organize Your Garage with Dedicated Zones

May 14, 2014 by Rick Scully

This time of year our garages can easily descend into a den of chaos. The kids are digging out the bikes and rollerblades. You’re sifting through sleds, snow shovels and Christmas decorations in search of your garden tools. Meanwhile, one (or both) of your vehicles is stuck outside because there’s never enough room to squeeze it inside the garage.

It doesn’t have to be that way.

Creating some level of organization in your garage doesn’t need to be a complicated or costly affair. Optimize the space in your garage by creating related storage zones. Why are dedicated zones essential to a well-organized garage? Let’s reconsider the scenario above.

If your winter tools and sports equipment, holiday decorations and garden tools are all stored in the same area, it makes life difficult, especially when the seasons change. You’ll have to search through the winter items in order to reach the garden tools which are now in the back. This type of system breeds chaos and makes us less inclined to do the yard work.

Now, close your eyes and envision your garage as a well-organized space with separate zones for related items. The effect is similar to what you experience when you go to a hardware store. The shovels and winterization items are in one section. The garden hose and tools are in a separate location. You can easily find either type of item with minimal fuss or confusion. With that in mind, let’s apply that same system to your garage.

Like that hardware store, there are a few basic zones into which the items in a garage can typically be categorized. Let’s examine each zone and what items would best fit there.

Automotive Accessories

Create a small section to store items used to maintain your vehicles. In this zone, organize items like car wax, motor oil, windshield wiper fluid, a bucket and chamois cloths for cleaning the car. Group tools used during winter months, like snow brushes. If you keep an additional set of tires in the garage for the winter weather, these might require a separate tire storage solution.

Household Supplies

Perhaps you keep items like household cleaners and paint thinner (but not paint!) in your garage. First, be sure to safely store household chemicals in your garage. Create a dedicated zone for these items. Use a cabinet or shelf that will keep these items out of the reach of your children and pets.

Garden Tools & Supplies

Homeowners often hire a company to maintain their yard and keep it looking beautiful. Others find great pleasure in maintaining their own yards. Planting flowers and shrubbery requires lots of hard work (and tools). The last thing you want to do before a long day of work in the yard is to spend an hour raking through your garage to find your garden tools.

Don’t let this happen to you.

Instead, create a zone in your garage dedicated to storing your yard essentials: hoes, shovels, trowels, fertilizer, garden gloves, flower pots, potting soil and other yard accessories. Then you’ll be able to put your time and effort into making your yard gorgeous, rather than searching for your gardening tools.

Recycling & Garbage Cans

Garbage cans and recycling bins are frequently stored in the garage. It might be necessary to keep these items in your garage. However, if not stored properly, waste bins are open invitations to vermin. They can also detract from the aesthetics of your garage and cause unpleasant odors.

Keep recycling and garbage cans together in a single zone. Store waste in cans with lids that fit tightly. This discourages smells from escaping and pests and vermin from entering the waste cans.

Tools & Workbenches

The garage is often home to a workbench and a variety of tools. Perhaps you’ve always wanted a workstation in your garage, but don’t believe you have the room for it. Even smaller garages can accommodate a custom-built workbench or workstation. Keeping tools organized is made simple with the right toolbox, pegboard or more sophisticated storage solutions. However, recycled items are also useful. For instance, an old muffin tin makes a good place to store nails, bolts and screws. You’ll be helping the environment and organizing your garage.

Sports Equipment

Most garages are brimming with sports equipment: bikes, skis, kayaks, rollerblades and balls. If you have school-aged children, you know how quickly these items accumulate and overtake the space that was once reserved for your car. When spring comes everyone starts digging out their sports equipment. Any semblance of organization you once had descends into chaos.

That’s why sports equipment requires its own separate zone in the garage. Use hooks, baskets or other organizational tools (which we’ll discuss more next time) to organize sports equipment.

Bicycles are large and bulky, usually requiring a separate storage solution. There are a variety of solutions for bike storage ranging from a traditional school yard-style bike rack to sophisticated overhead pulley systems.

It’s clear why separate zones in your garage make life easier. Now that we’ve reviewed each zone, you might be wondering how to keep the items in each section neatly organized. In the next post we’ll discuss all of the neat solutions that will keep each section of your garage looking its very best.

Do you want an organized garage, but just don’t have the time to do the work yourself? Consider hiring a garage renovation expert to organize your garage.

Professional Storage Solutions – Slatwall Organization Systems

June 18, 2013 by Rick Scully

Choosing the right storage products is essential to ensuring your possessions are kept neatly and safely. This is where the quality of the products you choose really matters. The last thing you want is to risk damage to your car or your family from tools or storage containers that might fall off improperly secured hooks or unstable shelving.

The first thing to look at when choosing garage storage is a way to hang things on the wall. As I’ve mentioned before, the secret to an organized garage is having a place to hang everything and get it off the floor. But not all wall storage is created equal. There are degrees of quality and unfortunately you just aren’t going to find top quality at a big-box do-it-yourself store.

Choosing quality slatwall storage

It’s difficult to tell the difference on visual inspection, but the slatwall that’s sold in retail stores is not built to the same standards as slatwall used by professional garage firms such as Garage Tailors Garage. Our slatwall is made of heavy-duty PVC, which holds a large amount of weight and stands up to moisture. The typical big-box slatwall is made of MDF, which is a wood fibre product. You can install it and hang your things on it and it will look good and work well for a while, but it won’t hold the weight and can’t withstand the moisture over time so it will eventually start to break down.

Advantages of PVC professional-quality slatwall

Our slatwall comes in 1 ft x 8 ft panels. This makes it much easier to handle as well as more customizable to fit your space. Sometimes you just need a small section of slatwall to store a few tools or to fit into a recess in the garage wall. It also comes in a variety of colours to match with shelving and floors. It also comes with matching trim to create a finished look and protect the exposed ends from nicks. The screws are even colour-coded to make for a more seamless look.

Hooks, shelving and baskets

Once the slatwall is installed you can think about what accessories you need to organize your items. The beauty of slatwall is you can add or change the amount of storage you have over time by adding more panels and adding or changing the shelving and hook options.

You can hang anything with a hole in the handle. That means gardening tools, sports equipment, recycling bins and even something as heavy as a lawn mower. Garage Tailors Garage uses the unique Camlok system. The hooks lock firmly into the slatwall and you don’t have to worry about them falling off. They’re also removable because they don’t screw into the slatwall like the big-box store hooks. This is handy when you’re rearranging your wall hooks to accommodate winter or summer tools and toys. You can easily remove the hook and place it somewhere else. Our shelves use Camlok too, as well as our baskets. Baskets are a great way to store things such as balls, sports equipment, car accessories and even antifreeze and heavy bags of salt.

If you’re planning to stay put in your home for a while and you want a garage renovation that will stand the test of time, consider investing in a quality product. I guarantee it will save you time and money in the future.

Garage Organization Ideas: Tips on Storage of Large Items

November 3, 2011 by Rick Scully

So far, we’ve discussed the motivation to clean out the garage and how to get started. Now that the clutter is out of the garage, garbage has been taken away and non-essentials donated or sold, we’re left organizing everything we want to keep.

Our main goal is to create a space for everything so it can be found easily. In order to accomplish this, we have to maximize all the space available – walls, floor and even the ceiling.

It makes sense to think about the large items first. Tires take up a lot of space. There may be one extra set or two, but either way, they can occupy a lot of real estate.

Depending on the height of the garage, a storage system can be set up overhead to hold them. However, not everybody is comfortable pulling four forty pound tires down, so the floor is an option. In this case, I recommend storing them along the back wall or in a corner as that’s often dead space.

Other large items are garbage and recycling bins. Because they’re used so frequently, they need a spot where they can be securely stored but easily accessed. Depending on the size of your garage, they may be at the back of the garage under a shelf or by the side at the front.

Large tools such as rakes and snow shovels can be hung on the wall. Something as simple as 2×4 pieces of lumber affixed to your walls will work. Just add long nails or screws and you’ll be able to hang most tools. You may also consider a wall organizer which gives you more storage and will hold heavier items as well, including your lawn mower!

Did you know that more people decorate their homes for Halloween than for Christmas? Even though the box of decorations is only used for one month a year, it makes sense to clearly label the container and have it within easy reach.

There are shelving systems available for these boxes as well as cleaning products, tools that can’t be hung and anything else you want to store in your garage.

If you need help organizing your garage, please check out our products page for ideas. We are always available to come to your home for a no cost or obligation estimate. We can take care of everything from the removal of junk, hazardous chemicals and reusable items, to the storage of items that need to remain. Let us know what you need, or want, and together work out how we can help you.

Seasonal Garage Anxiety Disorder

October 13, 2011 by Rick Scully

For most of us, the garage is likely the largest room in our house. Our cars are probably our second largest assets. It makes sense to use this space to house and protect our vehicles.

During spring and summer, however, we leave our cars on the driveway to have easy access to things like lawn mowers, bicycles and gardening tools.

It’s during the first cold snap of the year as we’re putting everything away that we look into our garages and wonder how two cars are going to fit. Seeing everything that’s filling up the garage, we experience paralysis. Often, there’s no clear way to start the clean-up process, so it doesn’t get started at all.

I call this Seasonal Garage Anxiety Disorder (SGAD): All the stuff is preventing us from using our garages for what they’re meant for and it causes concern.

In the next two blog entries, I’m going to help you cope with your SGAD! But first, we have to think about motivation: how badly do you want to get your car in that garage and why?

If the garage is de-cluttered to make room for vehicles, we can:

say goodbye to scraping ice off the windshield before the sun comes up
get into a warm car – in the middle of winter
worry less about security, especially for those who spend much of the winter down south

One of the main objections to cleaning out a garage is the amount of decision making that has to happen. It requires some tough choices about what to keep and it’s usually a full day’s worth of work.

I’ve encountered garages that were full of furniture – both from parents who have downsized and children who were moving out, seasonal decorations, winter tires, garbage and recycling bins. Some of the clutter has value, but there is only an emotional attachment to the rest.

The feeling of relief that’s experienced once all the stuff you’re not using is gone, will give a sense of release and freedom necessary to move forward with new activities and projects.

How great would it be to have shelving and storage systems that allowed garden tools, holiday decorations and toys to be found without digging through boxes? Easy access and storage for seasonal items like paddles, kayaks and canoes and tires? A discreet space for your garbage bins?

Garage storage systems, whether it’s cabinets, wall organizers, shelving, or a combination, can keep the garage organized all year round. So when next fall comes, we’re not standing in front of our garage doors, wondering where we’re going to park our cars, we simply drive them in.

Stay tuned for the next blog: How to get Started.

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