On this page, you will learn how to organise your garage. I find the garage one of the harder things to actually organise and it took me quite a while to have a good system setup. We set up a system a few years ago, in the video on the bottom of this page, I am updating and maintaining our garage.

Beautiful blue house with white garage door

Let’s start at the beginning with a couple of steps that will help you organise your garage.

Invest in good-quality storage solutions

The garage is one of these places you need to invest to utilise the space to its full potential. This means get some shelving from a hardware store (these tend to be indestructible, and pricey but once you have invested you are set). We bought wire rack shelving from Bunnings which has been amazing. It took us two weekends to purchase, take home, set up the shelving but it is adjustable, it hasn’t dated or worn and is super durable.

Note: you will not see me place wire shelving anywhere in my house (yuck) but for the garage, it works as you have big bulky items that you need easy quick access to. You also want to prevent or minimise the chances of mould etc. growing on your cupboards/shelving in your garage.

How to organise your garage – what do you own?

Have a look at what items you own and group these items together.

For us:

We initially had “stuff from moving in together” this pile became gradually smaller.
We had garden “stuff” all of a sudden I had a garden to maintain which required a whipper snipper (aka cordless line trimmers), a lawn mower and a leave blower. These all got placed on one side of the garage.
On the same side, we kept the camping gear as, like the garden items, we don’t use it that frequently but do need to keep it on hand.
Lastly, we created a space for the tools in the house with a little workbench.

How to Organise your garage – what do you do?

Inline, with thinking about what do we own? We also had to think about what we do as a family.

We have kids that are of an age that sports, art and experiments are important, so we need to make space for this.

My partner also lived a wonderfully exciting life prior to meeting me in which he obtained “stuff” aka gold clubs, skis etc.

The other side of the garage has been dedicated to what we as a family do.

So you can see spots for:

The golf clubs.
Some boxes with a lot of arty stuff. So the kids can make slime, candles, crystals and all weird and wonderful things. Keeping this contained in the garage means they can work on their projects or store their items in the garage so we don't have a mess in the house.
Outdoor toys (skates, skateboards, hula hoops).
We are a swimming/watersport family and I have several boxes of everything to do with swimming. These items tend to be big and bulky as we have wetsuits, jackets for cold days, big towels, water shoes, hats etc. All water boxes are blue for water and I have labelled them for clarity.
A final group of items was school items this is a spot where the kids can place their backpacks, library bag, school money etc.

Colour coordinate

As an organiser, I don’t use a lot of colour coordination and a lot of labelling (I find it a lot of work and hard to keep this organising system up). However, in the case of a family garage, I found colour coordinating great. We opted for large storage boxes (really sturdy ones that are hard to break and easy to clean) in a variety of colours indicating a different group of items.

For us this is:

Red for outdoor gear
Blue for swimming and other water sports.
Yellow for school bags (each kid one container)
Green for gardening
Black for overall cleaning, cords/bulky storage.

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How to store items

Since setting up our garage we fine-tuned a few things over time.

The first thing is storing items in a place that suits the frequency of use. For example, we have the roof pod for the car up high when we need it we will get it deliberately. We also keep our ski’s and ski gear up high until it is mid-ski season and we will transfer some of this content a bit lower and move the body boards up high as we won’t use them for a couple of months.

How to maintain your garage

You go through all the trouble of organising your garage you want to keep it neat and tidy. This can be hard as it is a very quick moving space if you have an active family life (at least that is the case for us). In the video below I show you how I maintain the garage and put things back on their spots.

Why can organising your garage be so overwhelming?

Organising your garage can be overwhelming because it is a large space, there are many, many items in it and they all require a decision to be made.

Don’t let perfectionism stop you

The fact that you are working on organising your garage means you are miles ahead of people who leave it for years and never move one of their boxes from when they moved in (five years ago).

In the video you can see that our garage isn’t perfect by far, some of the boxes are overflowing because at the time of filming we were in transition weather so it could still be fairly cold. Some of the items are clutter to me but are important to my family. The main thing is the items in the garage are valued and appreciated by someone in our house, we know where things are. So I like to think of this as realistic organise which suits our family and lifestyle. It does not always looks like a magazine, but as long as it functions organising your garage worthwhile and will pay dividends.

Here is the video