Garage Organization Tips and Ideas

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I've got some fun garage organization tips and ideas today. 

Our garage went from gross to great in a weekend. 

It's such a nice place to come home to now.

The garage, well, at least in our house, is the final frontier. You know what I mean, right? Every other room in the house gets prettified before the garage...it's always the last on the list since it's not as much of a heavy traffic zone. Since we moved in here in March, the garage has become a catch-all. It was where empty boxes landed...furniture with no home...drop cloths, tools, and everything else ended up in the garage. It was beginning to be a hot mess, y'all. 

But back to the heavy traffic thing...this house is different. It's set back from the road a bit and the garage is on the side toward the backyard. And the driveway is long and winding. So, guess where all of our friends come in? The garage. It's easy for folks to park in the driveway since it is so long. Most people enter our house through the garage and it's probably never going to change (back door guests are best, right?).

However, when your garage is an absolute disaster, having all of those people trotting through it on a regular basis is, well, mortifying.

This is a much better scenario than what I described above.

We're ready to welcome the masses now. And park a car or two.

Below are some of my tips on how this space came together. 

1. SORTING AND CULLING DOWN

Technically, we could always park one car in here, but both were out of the question. Actually, before a good ol' Texas hail storm earlier this summer, we shoved as much of our stuff in one of the garage closets (that was a nightmare) and brought in my husband's large SUV in, too...he literally had to crawl out the back, though, to get out. 

This space was a mess. Bikes, scooters, skateboards, extra furniture...you name it, we had it. We did do a lot of "getting rid of" and "this doesn't even belong in here" sorting. 

2. REPAIR AND REPAINT

I'm not going to lie...we may have gone too far with this, ha! We pulled the random 1x2 off of the wall (I'm thinking it was there since the 70s). We managed to rip several holes in the wall with this little stunt (at which point the "what were we thinkings" started). We patched all of the holes, then sanded. Then, we were finally able to paint. It made a huge visual difference, so we are glad we persevered on through the issues. While our wall was its own little special situation, the normal painting of garages isn't usually as complicated.

3. SYSTEMIZE THE STUFF

We bought the Rubbermaid® FastTrack® Garage Organization System for our garage organization needs. It was at The Home Depot. This system really is awesome, y'all. At the house we sold this summer, we left the garage organization pieces we had in place in that garage for the new owners. They served as selling features while it was on the market. So, we were starting from scratch over here at the new house. Sometimes starting from scratch feels pretty good...the options are a bit more open! 

Our three main pieces were the Rubbermaid® FastTrack® Wall Panels as well as the Rubbermaid® FastTrack® 48" and 84" rails. We also grabbed several sets of the Hardware Packs to help with installation.

The hardware packs made the rails a breeze to install. We did one rail on one side of the door and two rails on the other side, along with three of the wall panels. After this base piece is attached to the wall, the outer piece slides over it. The rail covers provide such a clean and finished look. Then all of the accessories can pop onto it. Each of these rails holds up to 1,750 pounds. This Rubbermaid® FastTrack® rail and accessory system stores so much more by utilizing the space between studs.

The wall panels were simple to install as well. They are perfect for tool storage.

After installation, just slide all of the accessories into place.  

The larger accessories for the rails pop on easily, as well. This is the cooler hook, above.

4. ADD ITEMS TO THE SYSTEM

This is the fun part, y'all. Hanging everything in its designated spot went so quickly. We put our kids' scooters and skateboards lower so they could reach them easily without our help. The bikes are up higher on the larger rail on the Rubbermaid® FastTrack® Vertical Bike Hooks, since they needed more length to hang. In our previous home, we had the bikes hung on the garage ceiling. This is so much better...and no more hitting my head on a bike handlebar when I get out of my vehicle! 

We hung the weed eater and extension cord in the corner area. The lawn mower is housed in the storage closet right next to this corner, so this made the most sense to us. 

5. HAVE FUN WITH IT!

I thought it would be a happy addition to paint the door bright turquoise and add a vinyl "welcome home" to it. After we painted the whole wall, we looked at the door and were like "yuck!". It made sense to paint the door an actual color to help hide a lot of the dirt that surfaces here. Plus, if you're shy about painting your front door a bold color, the garage is a great alternative! It's not as visible to the whole world, but still adds an element of fun to a space.

I grabbed my Rubbermaid® FastTrack® Garage Organization System and its components at The Home Depot in the storage and moving area. My store had a display allowing shoppers to play with the track and see how it worked.

How do you handle garage organization?

Neglect your chores like me and don't miss a thing:

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