5 Ways to Maintain Order in Your Garage

Garages usually have a lot of items to store, but not at lot of space to store them, especially when there are vehicles that need to be parked inside! Check out these creative solutions to maximize storage space in your garage while keeping your belongings organized. It doesn’t take much to get organized.

Calm Order Inc. Garage Organizing

1. Tool rack

Avoid leaning your brooms and shovels against the wall or having them scattered throughout your garage. tool racks are the perfect solution to storing these larger and in the way items.

2.    Garage track Systems

Use hooks to hang multiple items, whether it’s a bike, cords, or sporting equipment from the garage track on the ceiling. This will maximize the space on the ceiling without interfering with vehicles or the garage door.

3.   Glass jars, plastic containers

Glass jars and plastic containers are great solutions to storing nuts, bolts, and screws. They’ll be easy to identify and access, and stack nicely on shelving units or workbenches. The jars will also help keep like items with other like items and prevent these small items from becoming clutter piles in a drawer or cupboard.

4.    Peg boards or Slat wall - WE LOVE!

Using peg board to store your tools makes them more easily accessible. The tools can also be easily rearranged and added on to the board. Slat wall Systems are our favourite as they allow for customized wall storage that can fit a wide range of items from bottles and containers to hoses, wires, and power tools with hooks, shelves, or hanging baskets. These systems are not all created equal. Store wall is our favourite as they offer a tonne of accessories from hooks to ball bags and shelving and bins that fasten on the wall.

5.   Magnetic tool bar

They’re great for knives in a kitchen, but who knew they also worked great with wrenches and other metal tools in your garage? Try mounting a magnetic strip around your work bench or on the wall above to store these items. You won’t need to worry about finding special hooks or drawer inserts. Just take them and place them back on the magnetic strip when you’re done!

Has your family looked at you sideways when you enthusiastically brought up the idea of getting organized?

Imagine being able to find everything once and for all.

Has your family looked at you sideways when you enthusiastically brought up the idea of getting organized? To them it might sound like another cleaning expedition. Have you tried to show them the Marie Kondo fold, or the vertical fold as Calm Order has always called it? Maybe you think your family will laugh or roll their eyes at your attempt to organize, but Allbright doesn't think so. "I find introducing new organizing systems is most often met with a sense of relief because the family often feels over-burdened by their stuff. The want help" says Karen. "But you want the family to USE the organizing system so it needs to reflect how they move through their day naturally."

Calm Order was moving an executive and his partner to their new home in Calgary. They were moving from their family home of 25-years and in the interest of time, did not plan to purge or pre-sort their belongings until moving into their new place. They brought everything with them. When Calm Order conducted a pre-move inventory of their belongings, they quickly saw a challenge with the volume of clothes compared to the closet and drawer space in the new home.

One of the partners was an avid runner and kept every race t-shirt he had earned over his lifetime. And, after 40+ years, that is a lot of t-shirts! He was adamant he would wear his race t-shirts regularly so did not want any placed in storage or out of daily reach. As Professional Organizers helping the partners move into their new home, it meant acknowledging his appreciation for the t-shirts. The Calm Order team needed to develop an organizing system considering the closet and drawer space available. HIs partner called him a collector, we consider him an achiever. A collector does not make regular use of their treasures, they display or store them. And that requires a completely different organizing solution.

The runner laughed out loud as we vertically folded and colour sorted all of his t-shirts and put them away in his drawers. "How am I going to keep that up?" he sighed. The vertical fold organizing approach increases storage capacity significantly and more importantly, makes it much easier to see (and of course wear) each individual shirt. After seeing the drawers completed, he was on board and eager to keep the organizing system in place. A Calm Order organizer showed him how to do the vertical fold, and to help him maintain the organizing system, installed fabric drawer dividers.

Calm Order views organizing as a puzzle to be solved. Karen gently cautions clients not to be too hard on themselves. "There is an organizing solution that can respond to and support almost any behavior. Flat-out laziness excluded of course", Allbright adds with a smile. "It is important to take a step back and try to understand why an organizing system isn't working. If you are starting fresh with a move or just because the time is right, before implementing a new organizing system, ask yourself how you and your family are going to live in the space. Look closely at each member's daily routine and implement an organizing system to support it. That is the key to maintaining organization and minimizing battles within the family."

I can organize... but I can't STAY organized

You have read the organizing books, even hired a professional organizer, but you cannot get your family on board to keep your house organized! Sound familiar? It's okay! Organization fails happen. And when they do, it's easy to place the blame on your kids, your partner or even yourself, but that isn't going to solve anything. At Calm Order, we focus on removing blame and taking a closer look at behavior to see how we can adapt the current organizing systems to better match our client's lifestyle ... "bad" habits included.

One client called us fed up with their teenage daughter's habit of leaving all her skin care and hair products scattered on her bathroom countertop. "I put in an organizer on the back of her bathroom door, right beside the countertop. Each product had its own pocket, I thought it was brilliant. Well, it didn't work!" the client cried. "My organizing system can't survive when my family won't help."

Her young daughter, like most, was busy. She dances, plays volleyball, loves to draw, follows the latest hair trends and is constantly busy with homework. This was her reason for not using the over-the-door organizing system. Calm Order has seen this behavior before. This girl is a dropper.

Instead of fighting it, we recommend putting a basket on the bathroom counter to corral her products while she is going through her morning routine. She can put away the product into the organizing system on the back of her door when she has more time. Better to leave the countertop clear enough to wipe down.

The young girl had other "drop" zones in the house where her hair elastics, jewellery, water bottles and lip balms accumulated and it drove her parents crazy. A bookshelf in the basement, right next to where she practiced dance and worked out was one drop zone, and the phone desk near the back door was the other. Calm Order suggested the same strategy. Place a gathering basket or tray (with her name on it) at both "dumping" spots. Not perfect, but certainly a step in the right direction. How does the saying go? If you can't change them, find a way to work with them

"Full disclosure, I'm a dropper," smiled Karen Allbright, owner of Calm Order. "For me, it is most obvious in my bathroom. I guess I haven't outgrown my teenage habits." Allbright continues, "Getting ready in the morning, I just don't take the time to put my hair product and make-up back in its place. But it is easy for me to keep it all corralled in countertop vanity basket. I don't want to come home after work to a mess. It just feels easy to put it away properly as I go through my bedtime routine. I like to start the next day fresh."

Using a tray or basket to contain items can help reduce clutter and keep you organized for your morning routine.