We finally finished organizing the garage, and now we can actually fit both cars in again.  I am so excited about this because it has taken us what feels like forever to get this space organized again.  At the beginning of the summer I shared our plan for organizing the garage.  We started by painting the space to make it feel more cohesive with the rest of the house.

We love using Benjamin Moore, as their paint is incredibly true to color, and easy to paint with.  So we went with Benjamin Moore Deep Silver for the walls.  I wanted to make the peg boards pop, so we decided to paint them a different color.  After a few paint swatches over the course of a few days, we ended up deciding on Benjamin Moore Almost Black for the peg boards.

The nice thing about painting everything is that it gives you the opportunity to clean and wash everything in that space.  We never actually cleaned anything in the garage when we moved in, so by actually taking the time to power-wash the walls, made a huge difference.

Once the garage was totally painted and ready for organizing, I realized that we have a lot of stuff that we need to get rid of.  A few neighbors joined together to hold a multi-family garage sale.  (I shared my tips on how to get ready for a garage sale earlier this summer!)  We sold a lot of stuff and ended up making enough money to buy two chairs for the living room.  It was so nice to clear out the space and remove all of the junk that was just taking up space in the garage.

Then, we took some time to hang a lot of our lawn equipment and organizing the peg boards.  We had to remove a cabinet that was hanging on a wall due to the fact we couldn’t fit anything in them!  These cabinets were incredibly small and narrow.  They were taking up some valuable wall space, so we decided to remove them.  Once they were removed, we were able to hang our Bags set, sawhorses, and ladder.  This helped remove a lot of clutter from the floors.  We evaluated everything that we were keeping to make sure we were actually using that item.  It took some time, but we only kept what was essential.

We also took some time to organize our gardening items.  Since we have cabinets in our garage, we are using the drawers and cabinets of what look like an old vanity as our gardening station.  I have attached all the planters guides to every flower we planted hanging from a push-pin on the cabinet door.  All the gardening tools are located in a planter box.  We are using the drawers to hold gardening gloves and old rags.

I had a lot of boxes for donation, sell, and dump due to the Organize Back To School Challenge.  These items were taking up a lot of space in the garage.  So, once the challenge was over, I packed up the car and donated all the boxes that were in the donation pile.  When garbage day arrived, we dumped all of the broken items that we had organized throughout the challenge.  I still had a few boxes of items to sell.  I did my initial research and found some local resale shops, but that is where my selling journey ended.  The sell boxes just sat in the garage, on a table that was used for the garage sale.  I don’t know why I just dropped the ball on that one, but I finally got things cleaned up and created an action plan.  I packed up the car with most of the items to sell and have scheduled appointments at the resale shops to see if I can sell any of the items.

Once I had room in the garage, I took everything off of our shelving unit near the door.  I organized all of the tools using drawer organizers like these from Target, and the tool bag.  I put some screwdrivers, nails, and smaller building items into the drawer organizers, making them easy to access.  All the tools took an entire shelf of the shelving unit.

I used one entire shelf for painting products.  I took an extra crate from The Container Store and stored all the extra painting brushes in the crate.  I stacked all the painting trays together, from smallest to biggest.  The bottom shelf is holding the extra mulch and dirt.  The top shelves are holding car gear.

In some of the remaining cabinets, we are storing car cleaning kits, paints, and lawn care essentials.  We also have a nice space for storing the sports balls and other outside toys.  In that same cabinet, we are storing some of Ben’s golf items and other sporting equipment.

Now I am so incredibly happy to have our garage back.  And with fall coming, it was kind of important to get Ben’s car out of the driveway sooner, rather than later, because you never know when snow will hit the Midwest!  Fingers crossed our garage will stay this way throughout the fall and well into the winter.  Now it’s your turn to get your garage organized before the snow falls.  Take some time to truly clean everything out and get rid of the clutter!