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 Restoring
Order to Your Home
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CBN.com –Spring
is on the way and as the sun begins to shine
through our windows, our itch to tidy up our homes
returns. As you dig out your lawn mower and patio
furniture, are you embarrassed to leave your
garage door open very long? Have your cars long
ago been booted from their rightful home to make
room for more clutter? Are you taunted by the
teetering stacks and piles crowding every inch of
your garage?
As my organizing column gathers momentum, I
thought I would spend some of these first articles
giving you a new perspective on organizing and
addressing some key household hot spots
of disorder. Last week, I shared some foundational
planning steps for establishing a successful home
office. As a professional organizer I can tell you
the office is the most requested space in the
home. From my experience, however, it’s the good
old garage that is the most contentious
space in the home! Husbands and wives have spent
untold hours bickering about this closed-in
carport! Why? Because the garage acts as a
household receptacle!
The Step and Toss™
So, how do our garages get so
cluttered and neglected? The garage is the one
place where we toss everything that doesn’t have a
home! If you don’t know where you put it, you toss
it in the garage! If you want to get it out of
your way or out of your sight, you toss it in the
garage. You simply step inside the door (afraid to
go much further into the abyss) and toss whatever
is in your hand.
When you find yourself using your garage as a
receptacle, examine the root problem. Usually,
items are being tossed in the garage for two
reasons. First, it’s likely that you haven’t
resolved all your organizing challenges within the
home. If you had, for example, a designated space
for overflow pantry items inside, you would not
open the garage door and launch cereal boxes or
paper towels into this vortex of miscellany. If
you had a “home” for utility items inside in your
laundry room, you wouldn’t shove light bulbs and
batteries into any space they fit. If you haven’t
taken the time to “purpose” your interior storage,
you will likely turn to the only obvious storage
locale in the home: the garage. Second, if the
garage captures your cast-offs, it’s likely you’ve
never given yourself a total garage overhaul.
In many garages, our organizers uncover “time
capsules” which is the frightening outcome of your
Step and Toss behavior. A time capsule could be a
beach bag with magazines, a work project, and a
half eaten apple from last month. It could be the
“company is coming” cardboard box from last
summer, filled with unopened mail, school work,
and bills. Time capsules suck in important
information and belongings, and they often
mysteriously find their way to the garage.
Here are some strategies to help you address
your mess in the garage:
1. Work on the garage last. It
is much easier to tackle a garage after you have
organized the rest of the house. The garage tends
to be a dumping ground for all the “unknowns”
throughout the house. If you know where everything
goes within the home, when you organize your
garage, many items can be re-located inside. When
you come across luggage in your garage, and you’ve
previously determined that all luggage will live
in your basement, this luggage can be re-united
with its counterparts in the basement. When you
find boxes of archival paper and memorabilia stuck
in the dark corners of your garage and you’ve
already decided that the upstairs hall closet will
store all memorabilia, you know just what to do
with those boxes you’ve just uncovered. When the
inside of your home makes sense, determining the
appropriate contents of your garage will be much
easier.
2. Set aside enough time to work on
your project. I recommend dedicating
back-to-back days (like an entire weekend) to work
on your garage organization project so items that
are being sorted do not have to sit out in piles
for long.
3. Hire an expert or
assemble a team of people to work on the
project, or it may turn into an overwhelming task
that will be abandoned part way through. Also, be
sure to identify a project manager to provide
direction for the crew.
4. Consider what
categories of items you want to store in
your garage. Does luggage really have to live
there, or can it live in the attic, or an indoor
closet? Should chemicals live in the garage, or
can you relegate them to the garden shed? Some
typical categories of items that are housed in the
garage are:
- Recycling
- Overflow pantry and household supplies
- Sports and recreational equipment
- Camping gear
- Automotive supplies
- Seasonal décor
- Yard and garden supplies
- Utility items like tools and hardware
5. Once you know what
categories of items should “live” in your garage,
begin pulling everything out of your
garage to begin your discovery process.
As each item comes out of the garage, place it
into a box and give the box a category name. Label
the box with its category name. Arrange these
category boxes in the driveway, or center of your
garage. Obtain lots of boxes in a variety of sizes
since items of all descriptions, from huge paint
cans to nuts and bolts, will need to be sorted.
6. Reconsider, trash, or donate items.
Once items have been consolidated by like type,
you can then begin assessing what you use and what
you don’t use. You will likely find items that
have a better destination within the home. You
will also find belongings that can be donated to
your favorite charity, others that are broken, and
still others that can wait till the end of your
project for you to determine a proper place for
it. Now is the time to purge any excess, broken,
or unnecessary items.
7. Determine where you
want each type of item to live by frequency of use
and available space. Recycling should
live near the entrance to the home for ease of
use. Hardware should live near the workbench, and
so on. Think about your most “valuable real
estate” when you are considering available space.
Parking space and those shelves at eye level or
within reach are “valuable real estate.” Less
valuable real estate would be very high or low
shelves, and should be reserved for less
frequently accessed items.
8. Install additional
built-in cabinets or obtain modular storage if
needed. Now and only now should you begin
shopping for product (storage shelving and bins)
since you are now aware of exactly what you want
to store and how much needs to be stored together.
Most people make the mistake of getting the
plastic bins, shelving, or even an expensive
built-in system before they’ve gone through the
instructive process of sorting and categorizing.
You can save money and stress if you hold off
buying product until the right time in the
process.
If you choose a built-in system, you’ll have to
pause the re-loading process until your customized
system is installed. Keep the labels on your
category boxes, and arrange them in the middle of
your garage so the install can take place around
the perimeter.
9. Re-locate remaining
items into their new sensible destination
within the garage. This is the re-loading process.
If you have held off buying product, you can now
use the correct bins, boxes, and storage
containers to store your belongings and establish
systems that really work for your family. Involve
everyone in the reloading process and they will
feel more ownership about where things should go.
10. Commit to a
regular schedule of maintenance for your
newly organized garage. Promptly put things away
after using them, and order will truly be
restored! Get quarterly or bi-annual garage
maintenance on your calendar. If it doesn’t make
it onto your calendar, it is far less likely to
happen.
This strategic plan for organizing garages
works for me and my professional organizers as we
tackle garages across America and it can work for
you, too! If you dedicate the time and follow my
process, you’ll no longer be embarrassed to leave
your garage door open on a sunny day!
~Vicki Norris
Some parts adapted from
Restoring Order™ to Your Home a
room-by-room household organizing guidecopyright
©2007 by Vicki Norris (available in bookstores and
at
www.RestoringOrder.com). Published by Harvest
House Publishers, Eugene, OR.
About the Author: Vicki Norris is
an expert organizer, business owner, speaker,
television personality, and author who inspires
people to live out their priorities. Norris is a
regular on HGTV’s nationally syndicated Mission:
Organization, and is a recurrent source and
contributor to national lifestyle publications
including Quick & Simple magazine, Better Homes &
Gardens, and Real Simple magazine. Norris’
premiere book Restoring Order™ : Organizing
Strategies to Reclaim Your Life™ (copyright 2006)
is also published by Harvest House Publishers. |
