In our recent blog, “Never Store These 8 Items in Your Garage,” we went over which items would be better off elsewhere, (hazardous materials, electronics, wooden furniture). There are still plenty of items: tools, toys, garden supplies, camping equipment and such, that are perfectly fine to store in your garage space. It can be easy for your garage to become a catch-all, however, where all the items you can’t find a spot for inside tend to congregate, collect dust, and clutter your garage to the point of pushing your cars to be parked in the driveway. Not ideal.
Professional organizer Lisa Woodruff, founder of Organize 365, has a solution to prevent your garage from becoming a hot mess, and it’s simple as can be: shelves. Nothing groundbreaking, everyone has shelves in their garage, you might think. But we’re talking about a specific brand and model of shelves that anyone can assemble (without tools), that are easy to move and easy to clean.
Best of all, the specific model and size she recommends easily accommodates large plastic bins, instead of being a tad too short or shallow. At the edge of your seat? OK. They are (drumroll please): the Gray 5-Tier Plastic Garage Storage Shelving Unit (36 in. W x 72 in. H x 24 in. D) by HDX, which fortunately or unfortunately can only be found at Home Depot. Be sure to purchase the model that is 24 in. deep, not 18 in.
With so many people redirecting their focus to home remodeling and organization projects this year, due to the pandemic, these shelves have been flying off the … shelves. One Home Depot employee said their weekly shipments of these specific shelves are gone within a day. No problem, since you can easily have them shipped. (The cost of shipping is worth it, if you are itching to get organized.)
If you are an avid gardener, these shelves are especially helpful when hosing things down. You can stack two out of the three levels and use them as a platform for spraying and disinfecting pots, saucers and tools. You can use the taller stack as a drying rack, and when you’re finished, remove the heavy items, drag back into the garage, restack and stock them back up.
A few other tips: Lisa recommends decluttering and grouping like items together before analyzing your space and purchasing organizational items like shelves and bins, but these shelves are a bit of an exception. They’re perfect for sorting items until you figure things out. She also suggests choosing clear bins so that you can quickly take inventory or find what you’re looking for. Listen to her podcast on tackling “hot mess rooms” here: How To Declutter Your Hot Mess Room 2020
Comments are closed.