The main purpose for the garage when it was first thought of was a small area to house your car away from the rain, snow, and theft. Most people don’t always use their garage for this reason, however. Some people choose to park on the driveway of their house or even on the street and use the garage as an extension of their home. Unfortunately, using this space as somewhere to store things often means it becomes a dumping ground.
From broken furniture to old toys, rubbish can accumulate and all of a sudden a garage space that was once an extension of your home now becomes a room behind a closed door that you hope to ignore. Of course, you can pay for rubbish removal, but then after the rubbish is gone you still have a bunch of stuff to sort through. You want to make the best use of the space that you’ve got, and would also like to be able to find the Christmas decorations when you are looking for them. Here are some tips to help you to declutter your garage and make it the best use of the space.
- Set aside some time. You’re going to need to give it some time to clear through all of the stuff that has built up in your garage. Starting a big project is not the easiest thing to do, but if you’ve been putting this off for a while then the best thing to do is set aside some time in the calendar to make sure that you do it. You may not have to complete an entire declutter or reorganization in one day, but you do need to look out some of those days on your calendar so that you have the time to do it. It’s actually the best gift that you can give yourself.
- Get some help. Depending on what needs to be done, you may need to have a few extra sets of hands to help you to declutter everything. Ask your partner, your kids, friends and more to give you a hand. If nobody has any additional time, you could always add a task to AirTasker and pay for somebody to come and help you.
- Start the sorting process. Grab yourself some bin bags and star sorting things into rubbish piles, donation piles, and a pile of the things that you want to keep. The stuff that you want to keep should be the smallest pile, and you need to set up some heavy duty gloves and a face mask to help you get through all of it without damaging your clothes or cutting your hands. It’s going to take some time to get through everything, particularly if it really is overly cluttered, but it’s a good way to get sorted.
- Decide how you want to use the space. All of the clutter, what are you going to do with the leftover space? Maybe you will actually move your car into the garage and stop using it like a storage zone. Either way, you need to decide how to utilize the space the best way that you can, and once you’ve made that decision, stick with it so you don’t end up decluttering all over again in a few months.