Need Help Tackling Your Garage?? Here’s Albie’s 5-Step Organization Process (And The Products She’s Using In Her Garage)

Posted by admin on Sep 07, 2021

Welcome to one of the least sexy transformations I have planned for the hygge ranch, and also, the one I’ve been the most excited about for the past couple of months.

And FYI… the hygge ranch is what I’ve dubbed our home since (1) it’s a ranch-esque style of home and (2) my design ethos is very hygge inspired. Now back to the garage…

Before

If there’s one thing you need to know about me it’s that I hate chaos and disorder. This is in large part because of my anxiety — with so much outside of my control, keeping things organized and orderly is my way of controlling something… anything. All of the projects that we tackled since moving into the hygge ranch — the living room, launderette, media room, bonus bedroom, and kitchen — were back-to-back and starting to take a toll on my mental health. Things were in a constant state of disarray and I had very little control over anything, especially when it came to the kitchen renovation… but we don’t need to relieve that trauma… just head here to bask in the reveal.

design by albie k. buabeng (me!) | photo by ellie lillstrom | from: reveal alert: how albie designed the hygge inspired luxe kitchen of her dreams (+ what she learned along the way)

With my mind chaotic and my home just a hot mess, I knew the only way I could get a handle on things would be through the garage.

We have a 2-car front-facing attached garage…. and it’s gotten A LOT of use! In addition to it being a place of storage for our grocery backstock, automotive tools, and all things home improvement, the garage is also where we receive deliveries, break down boxes, do DIY projects, and house my husband’s military gear.

The Garage Works Hard Y’all.

The kitchen renovation was when it really hit me how dysfunctional the garage really was and how much-untapped potential it had. With the right systems in place and some intentional organizing, it could totally transform the way we use the rest of the house. Once we wrapped up the renovation, we decided to take a break on major projects and redirect all of our energy so we could pour into the garage before taking on any more projects… because we definitely have a long list of projects ahead!

My priorities were purely functional — no razzle, no dazzle — with a focus on cleaning and organizing. It’s easy to hear “garage transformation” and to expect brand new floors and muraled walls and all kinds of custom upgrades.

Not this garage, lol.

Tackling The Garage Would Be A 5-Step Process:

Purge
Clean
Sort
Zone
Organize

And because there were no design or styling priorities — strictly utilitarian! — I could make choices based on practical measures answering the following questions:

Will this fit the space?
Can this work with what we already have?
How does this simplify our lives?

Major Key: Organizing is all about simplifying!

Anything other than making our lives easier would just be us shuffling things around and wasting time!

Step 1: Purge

we removed the cabinets & shelves, and installed insulation & drywall

Since we’d “just” moved in, there wasn’t much to purge. We didn’t accumulate anything new & instead we needed to get rid of the stuff that piled up from our projects — boxes, scrap wood — as well as things we thought we’d use but turned out we wouldn’t. This entire process involved a combination of a few trips to the local dump and selling things online. We were not afraid to get rid of things that no longer served us, no matter how good they were, because someone else could now benefit from them. One of our biggest sales was the cabinets that were in the garage. Since the cabinets were there, we planned to keep em and replace the counters, but the truth is… WE DIDN’T NEED EM! I suspect these cabinets were the original kitchen cabinets before the previous homeowners updated the kitchen before our update lol. We ripped em out and listed em, and 24 hours later they were gone!

Things we didn’t throw away or sell, we knew we could repurpose, like the 8’ x 4’ old brown pegboard. Yeah, we could’ve kept using it as we’d been doing for the past couple of months, but it was hung somewhere we didn’t want it and the size was inconvenient for the way we wanted to store things.

We took it down and have plans to use it in the garden shed for the outdoor tools… whenever I get around to organizing out there… stay tuned!

Step 2: Clean

You guys…do you know how much dirt, dust, and debris can accumulate in a garage? A LOT. Like a lot a lot. And it’s like sand… it just gets into everything! So much of what was in the garage was covered in thin layers of dust and debris from the projects — especially the drywall installation — there was no way it could ever really look put together ever after things were put away. Plus who wants to touch anything when it’s filthy?!

The cleaning consisted of wiping, dusting, sweeping, and more wiping… so much wiping.

Once everything was sufficiently wiped down — and I say sufficiently because this is still a utilitarian garage project after all — I could look at it once again with fresh eyes and feel safe in there with a clean tee… just in time for Step 3.

Step 3: Sort

I naively thought this part of the process was going to be quick and painless… it wasn’t lol. I had to pull out pen and paper to take inventory of what’s in the garage and, spoiler alert: I still haven’t really gotten into the weeds of sorting things out but a superficial sorting is better than no sorting at all.

This was, by far, my least favorite part of the process, and not because I don’t enjoy sorting — because I do! — but because in a space like the garage there are just so many small miscellaneous unidentifiable objects…so many things that I had to just guess what they were. How can you sort when you can barely identify? Because it was best that I do this with my husband — these are his things, by the way, because I am not nor do I have any desire to be the one who uses the garage… I’m just here to put everything in its proper place!

Step 4: Zone (With Renders Of My Future Garage)

With so many different types of things being stored in the garage, zoning is a natural part of the process — these things need to have dedicated spaces so that getting to them is effortless and instinctual. I decided to create three major zones — using each of the walls — and then within each zone, subzones.

The Three Main Zones Are: In The House, Home Improvement, Important But Not Urgent.

P.S. there is no “science” to naming my zones… literally just “how can I remember what goes here?”

1. “In The House” is the wall that’s shared with the house — on the other side of that wall is our flex space — and so that houses things that are more likely to come in and out of the house and/or impact the house more… think pantry backstock and coat rack. It’s also where my husband’s uniforms will live, which come in the house when it’s time to wash them.

2. “Home Improvement” is the left wall and home to 99.5% of our tools — everything from screwdrivers to hand saws — as well as anything else that would likely be used as part of a project. The subzones in this area are scrap materials, paints, and tools. And no zone is complete without its own miscellaneous section.

3. “Important But Not Urgent” is the last wall and exactly as it sounds — everything here is important but nothing there is pressing. For context, the sub-zones include military gear, outdoor tools, seasonal decor, and triage for new projects. Do you see where I’m going with this?

The most important consideration here is having subzones that are easy to maintain so that everything is easy to corral and put away. The point is to work smarter, not harder.

Step 5: Organize

This is my favorite step y’all. Why? Because it’s where all my previous (sometimes messy) hard work finally gets to come to fruition. It also consists of a sub-step that is totally my jam — SHOPPING! If you follow me over on my blog — which you should! — then you know I have been design daydreaming about the garage for quite some time now. Being an ambassador for The Container Store was the icing on the cake because it was my first stop for window shopping all the things for the garage.

I shopped for solutions that would be practical, above all else, so that all of the previously listed steps wouldn’t be for naught. No sense in doing all of that if things end up on pretty but not helpful solutions. Can storage be both? Absolutely! In places like the kitchen and the launderette, I prioritized stylish storage solutions. In the garage, I just wanna organize!

When all is said and done, this space will be one that can handle all of the things I outlined, and do so in a way that supports change and growth as we continue to get settled into the hygge ranch — there are projects in the pipeline and things we still have to fix aka #oldhouserivers, in addition to just our day to day necessities. While there’s always room for some fanciful upgrades, sometimes a practical space just needs practical solutions. Plus, I have lots of other spaces that’ll call for some before & after magic… but before we can get there, things need to be pulled together in here.

With the fall season around the corner, getting the garage pulled together feels like the perfect catalyst for a fresh start. P.S. can we make “fall cleaning” a thing aka a second “spring cleaning”?

Have you tackled a garage project? If so, drop your tried and true tips. Or if you’ve been avoiding your garage at all costs, I’d love to know what’s keeping you from getting started.

The post Need Help Tackling Your Garage?? Here’s Albie’s 5-Step Organization Process (And The Products She’s Using In Her Garage) appeared first on Emily Henderson.

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