Get Your Car Back in Your Garage with Good Organization and a Storage Unit
If your garage contains everything but your car, you’re not alone. The U.S. Department of Energy reports that 25 percent of homeowners with two-car garages are unable to park any cars in them because the space has been taken up for other uses, such as workshops, office space, home gyms, storage, or a combination of these uses. To add to the problem, the average garage size has gotten smaller over the years, leaving even less space to work with. But there is hope. With good organization and a self storage unit, your garage will be neat, clean, and have plenty of room for your vehicles. AAA Self Storage of Lansing has a variety of sizes of self storage units to fit any need. With their month to month leases, you can rent the storage unit for as long as you need.
Garages have a tendency to collect clutter like magnets. They can quickly go from a parking spot to a catch all for outdoor tools and gear, such as mowers, trimmers, lawn tools, gardening supplies, wheel barrows, camping gear, sports equipment, lawn and patio furniture, bikes, holiday decorations, and more. To add to the problem, household overflow, such as pet food, cleaning supplies, paper goods, winter gear, furniture, and even boxes of books and clothes have a way of migrating to the garage. Before you know it, your car is relegated to the driveway or street, leaving it susceptible to bad weather and break-ins.
Organizing the contents of your garage and implementing use of a storage unit is the perfect solution. To maximize space in both your garage and your self storage unit, you’ll need to take the time to go through everything, sort it, and organize it. Pick a day or weekend when you have adequate time to dedicate and the weather is nice. Pull everything out the garage and sort it into piles of items to keep, take to storage, donate, recycle, or throw away. Items that you use frequently should go into the pile of things to keep at home. Items that you use infrequently or seasonally should go into the pile for the storage unit. Things like furniture, holiday decorations, seasonal tools, clothing, and seasonal sports equipment are great candidates for self storage. Anything you haven’t used in a year or two should be put into the self storage, donate, recycle, or trash piles. Keep in mind that some chemicals and household products require special disposal and are not permitted for storage inside a unit.
Once you’ve sorted through everything and have eliminated the items you’re not keeping, you need to create an organizational plan for the items going back into the garage or into the self storage unit. This is a great time to install storage solutions in your garage such as shelves, cabinets, wall racks, hooks, and ceiling-mounted systems to take advantage of wall and ceiling space. Shelves are also a great organizational tool for your self storage unit. Sort items into logical categories and store them together to make them easier to find. Plastic bins are a great way to keep items together and out of sight. Be sure to label the bins and the shelves to make it easier to return items to the right place after use and keep a list of everything you put into your self storage unit.
As you pull your car back into the garage, think of all the time you will save not having to scrape the frost off your windshield. Plus, this coming spring you won’t have to worry about hail storm damage to your car either.