We know how easy it is to lose control of the garage. They can quickly become a dumping ground for the family’s bits and bobs, and before you know it there’s barely room for a bottle of screenwash, let alone your car.
But with the chaos of Christmas and the gloomy days of winter now behind us, we think spring is the perfect time to get your garage in order. Whether you’ve run out of places to store tools or you want to park your car undercover for a change, organising your garage can free up space you forgot you had and make it easier to store and maintain your pride and joy.
If you’re ashamed of the state of your garage, make it work for you again with these handy tips and hacks.
Quick Links
- Install overhead storage
- Take advantage of affordable steel pegboards
- Invest in jumbo shelving
- Repurpose old cabinets and lockers for industrial-style storage
- Use a pallet for storing upright items
- Use long screws for seriously thrifty vertical storage
- Hang a shoe tidy on for storing car care products
- Use magnetic strips to store metal tools
- Build a folding workbench
- Hang the family bikes from curtain pole brackets
1. Install overhead storage
Garages tend to be on the small side, so you’ve got use the space wisely. One option is to install overhead ceiling storage, in which you can store stuff on a rack bolted to the roof. There are a few different ceiling racks available depending on your budget, and they make it dead easy to free up floor space and store items over your car. Just make sure you follow the installation instructions and stick to the recommended weight limit for the rack you choose.
2. Take advantage of affordable steel pegboards
If you want to improve your vertical storage space, pegboards make a great alternative to a bulky toolbox. Available in a massive range of sizes to suit any garage space, they’re a versatile storage solution that makes it easy to keep all your bits and pieces in one place. Use a combination of brackets, shelves and hooks to maximise the versatility of your pegboard.
3. Invest in jumbo shelving
There’s nothing more annoying than searching for something in a cluttered and messy garage, but it’s easy to avoid this with a good old shelving unit. If you get a big enough unit, it’ll provide all the storage you’ll ever need in your garage – giving you ample space to store your car maintenance kit and all those odds and ends. If you don’t want to fork out loads on new shelving, why not have a go at building your own? This video can show you how.
4. Repurpose old cabinets and lockers for industrial-style storage
Looking to sort out your garage on a budget? A good way to improve your storage space without spending a fortune is to look out for old school lockers or office filing cabinets going for cheap – or even for free – online. Sites like Gumtree and The Freecycle Network often feature old office and school storage furniture that are surplus to requirements, and they make great heavy-duty storage for your garage.
5. Use a pallet for storing upright items
Sweeping brushes, rakes, spades, sports equipment; these sorts of things tend to take up more space than they should, and there’s always a risk of them falling over and dinking your car’s paintwork. To store upright items together safely in one place, be on the lookout for free wooden pallets. Timber yards and industrial estates often just discard old pallets, so you can often get a hold of one for nothing. Screwed into your garage wall, they make the perfect storage solution for those pesky long, thin items that never seem to stay stood up.
6. Use long screws for seriously thrifty vertical storage
If you’re not too bothered about what your garage looks like but are keen to maximise storage space, a handful of good long screws can work wonders for quickly hanging bits and bobs out of the way. Screwed into the wall at a slight angle, they make the perfect budget hooks for items that can hang. If you’re crafty, you can double-up on screws to store things likes spades and sweeping brushes, resting the thickest part between the two screw ends.
7. Hang a shoe tidy on for storing car care products
Cheap over-the-door shoe tidies like this one make perfect caddies for storing car care products in one place. From shampoo and wax to your trusty tin of Bradex Easy Start, this hanging storage solution keeps all those handy products together, so you never misplace the things you need. To keep things even more organised, label each storage pocket so you know exactly what’s where.
8. Use magnetic strips to store metal tools
If you like to have your tools close to hand and not swimming around in the bottom of a toolbox, magnetic strips are the perfect solution for organising your garage’s work area. These inexpensive DIY must-haves can be as long or as short as you want, and are ideal for those who like to get handy in their garage. Screwdrivers, spanners, scissors – you name it, you can hang it.
9. Build a folding workbench
Lots of people like to have a workbench in their garage for those DIY fixes and improvements, but they can take up a lot of space – especially if you want to park your car in there, too. One option is to build your own folding workbench which extends down from the wall, giving you the workspace you need without taking up loads of storage space. Check out this video for instructions on how to build your own.
10. Hang the family bikes from curtain pole brackets
Bikes can take up loads of room in your garage, especially if every member of the family has one. A great DIY solution for storing bikes efficiently is to mount sturdy curtain brackets in your garage, allowing you to maximise vertical storage space and get the family’s bikes out of the way.
Your car deserves a space in your garage, and so does Holts’ range of DIY car maintenance products and accessories. From Gun Gum to Radweld, Bradex Easy Start to Tyreweld, click here to visit our homepage and discover our great range of products today.