Before You Begin: Inventory
Look around your space and consider your goals. Take just a few minutes to do this--much longer than that, and you could end up procrastinating. Not this week!
Ask these questions:
- Can you currently fit your vehicle(s) into your garage?
- If your garage is for storage as well as parking, what exactly do you want or need to store there? Do you want to have room for your hobbies or recreation, as well as other equipment for lawn care and home maintenance?
We built our garage last year--the original garage (around 80 years old) was leaning southwest on a crumbling foundation. Since my husband is a triathlete and I'm a gardener, we designed a room to accommodate those activities. One of my goals is organizing my Ironman!
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| Don't judge me. It's a work in progress. I've got a week, right? |
Remove the Odds and Ends
Time to get to work. Keeping your goals in mind, scoop up the odds and ends that clearly belong somewhere else. This could include shoes, outerwear, toys, household cleaners or chemicals you've used for projects, or hobby and craft materials. You may not have a place for them and that's why they've ended up in the garage. That's okay -- that could be your next project. Let's focus on the garage first.Use a laundry basket or bin to contain this stuff temporarily for transport elsewhere.
While you're at it, get rid of any trash you see and fill up your recycling bin, too. Be ruthless. If it truly is something broken, dangerous, disgusting, incomplete, or generally useless, it's time for it to go. If you need help figuring out how to dispose of an item, check out Earth 911's helpful resources or my own blog post on the topic.
How do you declutter your garage? Leave me a comment and you'll be registered for a free Kindle and a bundle of great decluttering books (including mine)!
Good luck! See you tomorrow for Step Two!
I work on my garage in four quadrants. I pull everything out of each quadrant, sweep it, remembering to get the cobwebs up by the ceiling, and then put back only what belongs in that quadrant. Then I move on to the next quadrant. I keep a trash bag in the center of the garage to put trash in as I go, and the recycle bin is right there, too. Anything I plan to donate goes in the back of the truck so I can take it to Goodwill right away. I need to switch up the order I do each quadrant because when I get to the last quadrant, I tend to cut corners and don't pull everything out.
ReplyDeleteHi Carol! I like the way you divide up your space. That makes it a bit less overwhelming, I'll bet. So, do you use quadrants just for cleaning, or do you have your garaged "zoned" into four different areas all the time? Thanks for visiting my blog!
DeleteI more or less have stuff where it is to get to it when I need it. But the gardening tools spill over into all four quadrants. I need more options for hanging up gardening tools.
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