The Garage: A Work in Progress

We have to store the "clutter" somewhere, right? In our home, all the "stuff" that we don't use enough to keep in the house, is stored in the garage. As the title of this post suggests, this is a work in progress, and it always will be. We are continually purging our storage, and adding to it, and rotating through, and cleaning out, and reorganizing. Some days/weeks/months it looks better than others. Right now it actually looks pretty good, but that just makes it easier for me to "see" the projects I have ahead of me. :)

So, here's the tour of the most cluttered space in our house:

The view of our garage from the driveway. Obviously, our van insisted on nosing his way into the picture.

The other side of the garage. Again, the van wanted to be included.

I've mentioned our garage laundry area before, but here's a more zoomed out picture of it. On the floor in front of the machines is our laundry bucket that collects dirty socks and kitchen towels, as well as a diaper bag full of cloth diapers that need to be washed. On top of the washer is the detergent dispenser, as well as several grocery bags full of toys that were confiscated because the kids refused to pick them up, and now they have to earn them back. The dryer currently holds a stack of empty boxes because I haven't figured out where else to put them yet.

Next to the dryer is a water heater and on the floor in front of that is a tiny garbage can for dryer lint, a box of baby wipes and two boxes of disposable diapers (Costco coupons). Behind the diapers is an extra kitchen chair that currently holds a bag of potatoes and a bag of grapefruit. You can also see the step to the house, and through the open door you can glimpse our dining table and part of my fridge.

On the other side of the door to the dining area is the "mud room" shelving unit that holds adult coats & shoes. Above my shoes is another shelf that holds toys that don't fit into toy bins. I took this picture on Monday before we moved the waffle blocks to the house for this week's toy rotation. On the very top of that shelving unit is a stack of empty boxes that also contain original foam packaging for various items in our home, like my sewing machine and KitchenAid mixer. We've moved a lot in the past 10 years, and I have insisted on keeping several of these boxes.

The back wall of the garage holds the kids' coat/shoe/mud room area. The shelving above on the left is our pantry. It's more sparse than we would like at the moment, but it's functional. Canned goods and other dry goods live here. We plan to expand this farther to the right as we build up our food storage. On the right are storage boxes.

Here's a better view of the storage boxes. Four of those boxes are sewing supplies that I put back after my craft/sewing purge, at least 10 of them are homeschooling materials that I needed out of my way, and plan to seriously purge soon, and 5 of them are empty. I also have a couple boxes that hold off-season mud room items, like swim floats (since it's winter), and soccer cleats/shin guards/socks. I think there might also be one box of baby girl items, that I moved out of the house after we discovered that our anticipated addition is another boy. As we purge more of these boxes, we'll have more room for our pantry.

Under the shelves, and to the right of the mud room area is our workbench, which is currently hidden behind our giant double stroller, two umbrella strollers, and our large vacuum. The back corner of the garage has an additional water heater that is only connected to the master bathroom (probably my favorite feature in this house!).

Our back door is currently blocked by a couple saw horses that need to be returned to my parents, some wood for a current project, and a couple more empty boxes. The shelves along the far side of the garage hold more "long-term" storage, including Christmas decor, other holiday items (like Easter baskets & plastic eggs & trick-or-treating baskets), dead files (paperwork I can't get rid of for various reasons, but that I don't need to access), luggage, etc. On the floor in front of several large totes are the toy bins that are not in use this week (and a couple empty pink ones that just got dumped into the train table drawers). The totes behind and to the right of the toy bins hold things like extra winter coats & snow pants (we don't live in a climate where we need access to snow gear, but we visit family that does live in snow). There's also a tote of "sports equipment" that we are not currently accessing because it's too rainy, and there's a tote of home decor items that don't fit in our current home, but have sentimental value and I can't bring myself to get rid of them (see, I'm not completely heartless...).

The middle of the garage seems to be the catch-all. Right in the middle of the garage is a short coffee table with a white vinyl cover on it. This was meant to be the kids' art table, but it lost its place in our family room when we rearranged things not too long ago, so it's in the garage. It has actually been used for painting, while in the garage, so it's still functional. Currently, it's holding several items that I am passing on to my sisters and need to ship to them. On the floor to the right of the table are a couple boxes and bags that are donations I haven't dropped off yet. You might recognize some of those bags and boxes from my craft supply purge. There's also a red recycling bin behind the black bag that holds glass recycling.

Behind the table is a large jumble of bicycles and tricycles. Someday we will be purchasing some type of bike rack to keep these from falling on top of each other... but this is also part of having a large family... 2 adult bikes, 3 children's bikes, 2 tricycles and a scooter just take up a lot of space. :) If you look close (I-spy...) you can see an extra high-chair, and a bumbo seat. I've considered passing on the high-chair, but we've used it for guest's children, and occasionally for our 3 year olds when we have people over for dinner. I'm also pretty sure we'll use two again when our newest baby can sit up, and before our toddler outgrows hers.

To the far right in this picture are the large recycling bin and the smaller garbage can. We like to keep these in the garage so we don't have to go outside to empty indoor garbages, and so they don't get full of water when it rains, but also close to the garage door so we can drag them to the curb easier.

Also hanging on the far wall close to the garage door are two sets of golf clubs, and a large hiking backpack that is an emergency pack. Admittedly, it's a very old 72 hour kit, that was meant for 2 people and would probably last our family about 8 hours. :) Time to update.

Here's a better view from behind the garbage cans. Next to the adult bikes is the lawn mower and a collection of yard tools. On the floor under the fan and exercise ball are several wooden drawers that hold other yard equipment, but can really only be accessed when the lawn mower is pulled out.

As I said, this garage is a work in progress. It has changed a LOT in the year and a half we have lived here, and it is slowly morphing into what we want... but it will still take a lot of work. I will say that having a semi-organized storage space has made seasonal and holiday transitions much easier because we can find what we need fairly easily, and get it put away pretty quick.

And I just noticed how full our garbage can is in that last picture... that's because it's garbage night and we haven't squished the bags down yet... we usually fill the can, but rarely, if ever, overflow. :)