If your family is typical, you’ve probably got lots of stuff stored in your garage. And that’s OK; that’s one of the purposes of a garage. But if your family is like most, it’s likely that all of that ‘stuff’ stored in your garage has taken over the place. It might even be that your garage has become so hopelessly cluttered that it’s not good for much of anything else.
But unless you’ve got some world-class obsessive-compulsive hoarders in your family, it’s likely that your garage could accommodate all the stuff you’ve got stored and still be useful in other ways. Because utilizing your garage for storage is less about what you’re storing, and more about how you’re storing.
Hooks and Nooks…
Every garage, obviously, only has so much interior cubic footage available for storage. But one storage resource that’s sometimes overlooked is the massive amount of square footage available on the walls, and even on the ceiling. You can make use of all that space with hooks and wall-mounted shelving.
Storage hooks are great for hanging items that are awkward to store because of their size or shape. Bicycles, for example, or big loops of extension cords, or yard tools like rakes, hoes and ladders. A quick scan of your cluttered garage will probably reveal many items that could conveniently be hung from hooks, off the floor and out of the way. Installed properly, hooks can be used to store items of considerable bulk and heft.
Wall-mounted shelving also makes use of all of that wonderful vertical square-footage by creating lots of custom-sized storage nooks. Shelving of various widths and depths can be installed on your garage walls to accommodate a massive amount of ‘stuff,’ while encroaching upon very little of your interior space. And just as with the hooks, shelving can be used to store heavyweight items – assuming that the shelving is properly designed and installed.
The combo of shelving and hooks can offer a tremendous amount of storage capacity, while preserving most of your precious interior cubic footage.
Store-Bought Storage
If the hooks and shelving just aren’t enough, you can bump up your storage capacity by selecting from a wide array of storage cabinets. Garage storage cabinets can be wall-mounted or freestanding. They can double as workbenches. They can be made of wood, metal or plastic.
And though cabinets certainly intrude into your interior space more than hooks and shelves, they offer in tradeoff a massive amount of additional storage capacity.
Store Smart, Not…Well, You Know!
As with many problems in life, the problem of inadequate garage storage can be solved by just utilizing the proper equipment, and by employing a common sense, organized approach.
But allowing an out-of-control, unorganized overflow of stuff to continue to render your garage useless for anything but storage…that, shall we say, is just the opposite of smart!