Garage Organisation

Alrighty! The dreaded garage.. Lets get right into it. Our garage was never ‘messy’ but it also wasn’t as efficient as it could be.

Commonly asked questions:

I’ll start with a bit of context to some hopefully answer some commonly asked questions:

• We both work office jobs and live in a development so our yard is very small which means there is limited gardening.
• Our range of tools is quite limited because they’re essentially ‘hobby’ tools. They serve their purpose and we don’t feel the need to stock up on excess items for the sake of overcrowding a space.
• We’d much rather borrow things we may need on the odd occasion, rather than purchase and have to find a place to store it.
• Everything has a spot, is out in the open and labelled – it makes it much easier to put things back when we’re finished with a project
• Our garage is a standard double garage – we only have one car but tested this set up  with two cars to make sure everything will still fit.
• It’s a garage – it’s going to get dusty. I won’t go out of my way to clean it as part of weekly cleans. Sections will more so be cleaned as we use them. We don’t keep anything in here that comes inside on a regular basis, so if our suitcases get dusty for example, I’ll just wipe them down before bringing them inside on travel occasions.
• Our house is sprayed and pest controlled annually so we don’t get many bugs. We have kept our shoes in the garage since we moved in and have never found a spider or anything of the sorts in there.

Mudroom:

I have always been obsessed with traditional American homes. I love seeing them in movies and on Pinterest and have always loved all their character and warmth.

Often, these beautiful homes have a mudroom. It sounds like a dirty room, but they’re actually filled with beautiful cabinetry and details. A ‘mudroom’ is a term that refers to the ‘drop zone’ of the household.

Creating an entrance:

We don’t wear shoes in the house and enter through our garage every single day as we park in there, so I have always wanted something similar to those beautiful homes I saw on Pinterest to organise all of our every day stuff. It is such a great way to minimise clutter like dog leads, shoes, outdoor jackets, etc that we’d otherwise have to keep in the house.

We have a narrow space at the end of our garage that I knew we could utilise however we only had about 30cm of depth to work with if we wanted to park an SUV in there and still be able to open the boot. We have a standard two car garage so narrow ceiling height storage and utilising wall space was my biggest priority.

Space design:

I started by measuring the space and making a list of all the thing we wanted to be able to keep there. I knew I wanted a large cupboard to be able to cover some cables and electronics we have mounted onto that wall, so that gave me my first measurement.

Once I drew my ideal, I looked into Ikea cabinets to see if it was something we could build ourselves. It didn’t end up being as cost effective as I would have liked, especially considering we would have to do all of the work so I decided to get a custom quote instead.

To my surprise, the custom quote came back cheaper because I had solid drawings and a list of materials that needed to be sourced plus we did the painting and the detailing ourselves.

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• Handles: Ebay
• Hooks: Early Settler
• MDF: Bunnings
• Decorative shelf holders: Amazon
• Outdoor rug: Catch of the day
• Seat Cushion: DIY
• Baskets: Big W
• Decorative cushions: Thread candy

Once the custom structure was installed, we added the decorative shelf holders and mdf and painted everything white.

DIY Bench seat cushion:

Then, I got to work on the DIY seat cushion which I made out of some mdf and the stuffing of old pillows I had saved for when we were going to do this.

I had a piece of thin MDF cut to size at Bunnings and then used a staple gun to staple material to one side. Then I stuffed the board with the pillow filling and stapled the open side to secure everything in place.

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It came out a little lumpy but a bit of time and movement should fix that. In the meantime, I moved the cushions we had in the house out here and absolutely loved how they look. Couldn’t resist snapping a photo! I would love to keep the cushions there forever but a garage does get dusty so back they went haha.

Whilst organising the garage, we have tried to keep as much stuff off the ground as possible so we can hose down the concrete and get rid of dust and mud. This is really handy especially in winter with a dog.

I added an outdoor rug by the entrance to keep mud and dust contained and from entering the house. Because it’s made for the outdoors, it is almost plastic so it’s really easy to clean and if we do get a second car and drive over it when we park, it won’t be completely ruined.

Tool Wall:

Previously, all of our tools were shoved into a basket and a tool box, making them quite inaccessible.

We decided a pegboard would be the best solution, and have always wanted a fold-down work bench.

I purchased the flexi-storage system from Bunnings which lets you custom design your shelving and then we put it all together, track by track, piece by piece.

I would highly recommend to check out the range on their website and drawing up your own plans prior to going in store, because if you just go in to buy stuff, you will feel extremely overwhelmed. Literally every single piece in this pegboard is an individual piece.

The fold down bench consists of a piece of $20 timber from Bunnings and a retractable bracket I found on ebay.

Tub Wall:

For those of you following me on Instagram, you would have seen my ‘smurf tubs’.  I originally had big 50l K-Mart tubs against this wall which I tried to spray paint a navy blue but they turned out too light and I hated the colour.

Luckily my sister in law is currently moving house and my mother in law is organising her garage, so between the two of them, I found a new use for those tubs.

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I replaced mine with Ikea rubbish bins which were 40L each, which means I went up to 80L per shelf as opposed to 50L like before. They come in two sizes and are narrow enough so you can fit a bunch of stuff behind them that would normally belong in a shed.

There is no pretty basket you can put excess roof tiles in, and since we don’t have a shed, this was the perfect solution for us.

Everything remains hidden at the front but behind each tub is all the ugly stuff.

Wall Mounted Items:

All the big bulky items that don’t fit into the shelves were mounted on the wall. This part is probably self explanatory so  I won’t go into too much detail, but we pretty much added various hooks to the wall and hung items within their respective categories.

We currently have one unoccupied wall where the gardening stuff will be moved to, but while Dom was away (and using the other suitcases we hang here), I added our gardening equipment in the ‘Luggage’ section.