All tagged clean garages

The Key To Keeping My Garage Clean and Tidy

The Key To Keeping My Garage Clean and Tidy

Jody Yarborough
My Organizing Journey

Who would have thought that by cleaning the outside of my washer and dryer that it would help me keep my garage clean? Certainly not me. Certainly not my husband who wondered if my OCD had kicked into a totally new gear when he watched me clean them. Fact is, if I had known that the  magic formula to keeping my garage tidy starts with two glowing white appliances, I would have picked up my bottle of Simple Green many messy garages ago.

But I didn't. And that was then, and this is now. And as is with my general philosophy in life, learn better, do better.

You might remember a few months back I wrote about how I finally managed to clean my garage after many months of defeat, and the victory felt soooo good. I knew I had won the battle, but I also knew that it would take several weeks, and even months to pass before I would know if I had really won the war. Well I am happy (and proud) to report that my garage is still clean!!! Nothing has managed to get piled up, all the tools are in their proper places, and the whole space fills me with a sense of serenity and not stress-- for as much as a garage can really be serene.

A Tough Challenge: Keeping Garages Tidy

A Tough Challenge: Keeping Garages Tidy

Jody Yarborough
My Organizing Journey

Almost every day I take my Golden Retriever, Alton, for a walk, and inevitably I pass by at least one house that has their garage door open. I’m not really proud to admit this, but I can’t help but look inside. I don’t go up driveways or invasively invade privacy (they left their door open after all). I just scan the contents quickly as Alton and I go by.

As a person who strives to live an organized life and who flirts with minimalism, I can’t hep but be curious about how people are filling )(or not filling+) the roughly 400 square feet of space that is a part of their home. Most garages, I would say at least half, are used purely as storage spaces. Here in California the climate is such that parking your car in the garage isn’t a neccessitiy. Drew and I don’t park our cars in our garage.

So that leaves two categories remaining, really. Non-car garages that are well organized. And non-car garages that are just piles and piles of hot mess. Tidy garages utilize storage shelving, wall to wall cabinets, tool organizers and vertical storage solutions like bike racks, etc. The hot messes are just a mass of stuff in what seems to be very random chaos, stacked high, sometimes in unmarked boxes, with barely a square inch of floor to be seen, to say anything of a discernable walking path.