Ten-Minute Tips to Get Your Garage Organized

If your garage has gotten disorganized, it’s tempting to just shut the door and ignore it. As you know, however, clutter tends to build up and get more overwhelming the longer it sits! You may think that you don’t have enough time to whip your garage into shape, but you don’t need to dedicate a whole weekend to cleaning in order to make a difference. Try going through this list of ten-minute garage organization tasks. If you can get them all accomplished over the course of a week or two, you’ll see a noticeable difference in your garage.

• Clear off one shelf. When you look at your garage in its entirety, cleaning it seems like a gargantuan task! If you just look at one shelf, however, you might be surprised at how quickly it goes to get it cleaned off.

• Dispatch the mini troops. If you have children, chances are good that there are toys that have made their way into the garage. Send them out with a laundry basket to corral their belongings and bring them into the house.

• Wind up hoses and extension cords. If you have cords and hoses on the floor of the garage, it’s time to wind them up and hang them on the wall or store them in a box to keep them free from damage and to avoid tripping over them.

• Clear off your garage workspace. Do you have a workbench, saw horses with planks or some other workspace? Get it cleaned off.

• Pick up the trash. If you have scrap wood or random junk laying around, it’s a hazard for everyone. Take a garbage bag or your recycling bins, set the timer for ten minutes and pick up as much as you can. You can repeat this another day if you have a lot of garbage built up.

• Clean your garage cabinets. You don’t have to completely organize them at this point; just wipe the dust off of the front and tops. Pay special attention to around the handles, where grime tends to accumulate.

• Knock down cobwebs and dust. Garage walls tend to get dusty. Take a broom and clean off any cobwebs, spiders or dusty spots. Don’t forget the area around the garage door opener.

• Hang up a few items. Install brackets or hooks and hang your shovels, broom, rake or other items that are better stored off the floor. Remember, only spend a few minutes doing this. You don’t have to hang everything at once. Repeat as necessary.

• Do something about one box. Do you have boxes cluttering up your garage? Take ten minutes to go through just one of them. If it’s full of items to donate, put it in your car immediately. If the items need to go into the house, go and put them away.

• Sweep the floor. Whether you have concrete floors or specialized garage flooring, just use your broom to sweep up what you can. Even if you can’t get into every corner, this will make a big difference in how your garage looks and feels.
  

Remember that the point here is to just spend a few minutes working on one task at a time. Don’t overwhelm yourself with perfection! By taking this time to chip away at your garage clutter, you’ll find that big clean-outs can be done less often and with much less stress.