Oh, garages. They’re an awesome space for storage (or, you know, parking your car) and it’s been so exciting for me to have one now that we’ve moved into a “real” house. But they’re also really awesome at collecting a ton of crap totally important stuff that has no purpose.
We spent a day back in early December cleaning up and getting rid of all of our boxes from moving. We thought we would be able to keep it clean after that, but just a few months down the road and it was looking something like this:
Yeah, I don’t know if you noticed, but it’s EVEN WORSE than it was before. I don’t even know how that happened, but I’m blaming it on Christmas decorations and a bit of furniture shuffling (like getting new nightstands and switching out the bed in our guest room).
All I have to say is that I’m glad I challenged myself with this whole “organize one room a week” thing, because if it wasn’t for that I don’t know if we ever would have gotten our garage under control.
Corey and I spent a couple of hours on our Sunday afternoon organizing, and soon enough we had something that’s much easier to, you know, walk in.
We’ve still got a bit more clutter in here than we would like, but we’re working on it. We’ve got a stack of things at the back of the room that we have listed on Craigslist currently – if they don’t sell soon we’ll toss ’em out on the curb and someone will pick them up. We also have a (surprisingly large) stack of things that need to be given back to various people (mostly a ton of random stuff from Corey’s mom) and a nice little pile of furniture that is waiting to be given a new home in our house.
I don’t think our garage will ever actually look nice (at least not until we get some sort of actual organization system in there), so I think this is the best we can ask for at this point. I’m thrilled that we can walk into the room now without tripping over a million different things, though, so I won’t complain that it doesn’t look pretty.
I’m really starting to feel like our home is finally organized. All of the rooms that had major clutter in them are nice and cleared out now, and I know where to find anything I might randomly need.
I know. What a novel thought – I can actually find things in my own home. It’s pretty exciting.
We’re down to the last week of our organizing challenge – and I’m really happy to say that Corey and I are actually a bit stumped over what we’ll organize this week! I’m sure we’ll think of something, but this has been the first week that we didn’t immediately know exactly what needed to be organized. That’s a good feeling.
It’s not too late to join in on the Organize-a-Thon! All you’ve gotta do is organize one room or area of your home, snap some photos, and either blog about it (and tell me you did) or e-mail them to me at [email protected] I’ll be doing a round-up of everyone’s organizing projects the first week of March, so be ready for that!
Do you have a garage? Is it just a junk collector like ours has been so far, or do you keep it nice and organized?
Catherine says
Wow. You guys did a great job. The garage seems like a constant project for us. We clean and organize it but then it lasts about 2 months before it looks like a hurricane hit it.
Emily says
I’ve been reading your blog awhile but have never commented. I just wanted to say thank you!! For being honest and showing how your garage looked BEFORE and after! I love to know that I’m not the only one. 🙂
Chance says
Random question, but do you park your car in the garage? Up here in MN I love having a garage spot to keep my car dry and clean with all the snow and slush, but also it feels a bit more secure to keep my car in it. Is there a reason you don’t?
Amanda says
We don’t park in the garage, haha. I don’t really know why – I never had a garage growing up, and Corey’s family always used theirs for storage instead of parking.
We have plans to eventually convert the garage into a den/office space, so I guess it’s partially just our way of not getting used to using it for parking! 🙂
Sarah says
I know this is not for you, but my trick for keeping my garage in perfect order is this. It HAS to be, in order for me to park my truck in there. When I am in Afganistan, my truck is safely locked up in my garage and it would not be so if as little as one thing was out of place.
But on another thougt, your last photo, the chair on the end. I am in LOVE with that! I am planning on raiding thrift stores for a set of tw oJUST LIKE THAT! I fell in love with the style when I saw one on the set of “The Exes”.
Brooke says
Our garage is calling our names to be cleaned this weekend… blurg. We’ve been putting it off forever! In our case it’s that we do so many projects and never clean up after ourselves. So whenever I go in there looking for my scraper or a hammer it sucks me in for 20 minutes. Slackers unite! Haha.
But you did inspire me with your closet organization! We finally took on our hall closet and turned it into a more crafty area. Very happy with the outcome and would love to share! http://www.killerbdesigns.com/craft-closet-makeover/
Amanda says
I love your closet so much! I will definitely add it to the list of projects to feature at the end of the month!
And I’m glad we aren’t the only ones totally slacking on getting this stuff done!
Colleen says
Living in Canada, yes, we keep ours organized. When it gets to be -40 you want to be able to park in a garage 🙂
Amanda says
Um yeah, I think I would keep my garage clean too! I literally can’t even imagine what -40 would feel like!
Layla says
We have a garage with NO shelves or storage (and since we rent, we aren’t supplying any), so it’s a mess. 🙁
Amanda says
Oh that’s frustrating! Ours doesn’t have nearly as much actual storage as we would like it to, but we lucked out and the previous homeowners left a little bit for us!
Mandy says
Ahh!! That garage was scary!! You guys did a great job though, it looks spic and span!
Jenn says
Our current rental home has a 2 car garage. I saw it and though Storage! Todd, whose from Nebraska, where they actually use garages to keep the snow off their cars, kept saying, well, maybe we could fit one car in there, too.
It remains storage (and the laundry room). Periodically Todd will spend a Saturday trying to organize the chaos (there are some built-in shelves, so that helps), but we just don’t let it bother us too much.
Corinne says
My garage started out as the “landing pad” when I first moved into my house. It’s still a landing pad, but for more junk! I have clothes that need to be given away and boxes that need to be thrown out, but also a new fire pit that still needs to be put together and a perfectly useable mini-fridge, among other useful items. I don’t mind too much though since I only need to park one car in there! The previous owners used the garage for nothing but storage, and the amount of crap they had in there makes your before picture look perfectly spotless!
Kathleen says
We live in an apartment but it does not have a garage; we do have a spare bedroom that has turned into the junk room though. A week or so ago I came home from work (my fiance gets home before me sometime) and he had cleaned the whole thing! I was shocked. We are not the most organized people on the planet, but we are trying to be.
Lauren says
We had a garage attached to our old apartment. It started off as really clean and slowly began to be the go to storage space for our suitcases, Christmas decorations and other random things that I couldn’t find space for inside the house. We did try and keep the storage to a minimum since we parked one of our cars in it (thankfully we had another storage area on our balcony).