Organization Ideas for the Garage

Does anyone else feel like decluttering and organizing is an ongoing task when you’re a parent? As the seasons change and your kids get older, each year brings a new set of toys, sports, and other activities that fill your home.

One thing I’ve found that makes this task a lot easier is to create organizational systems and put long-term solutions in place. This way everything in my home has a dedicated spot, and I don’t have to spend hours organizing the same space over and over every couple of weeks or do a massive clean-up over the weekend.

Back in 2021, my family and I organized our garage, and it was a game changer. We live in an urban area, so we don’t have a shed or additional storage. Everything we use for the outdoors, home repairs, and decorating for the holidays has to fit in the garage along with both vehicles.

It still looks this clean and organized today!

When we think about organizing our home, the garage isn’t usually the first room you think of. We don’t live in our garages, so it’s easy for them to fill up quickly with items we don’t use every day — or use at all.

But I highly recommend organizing your garage because it’s typically how we get into and out of our homes. This means it’s the first place you see when you come home and it’s the last place you see when you leave home. Having that space be chaotic and disorganized can immediately impact your mood, so you end up feeling stressed, overwhelmed, or irritated as soon as you walk into (or out of) the door.

I would much rather walk into my home feeling calm, light, and happy! Of course, there are a lot of other things that can affect how you feel, but organizing the garage is an easy one to control.

To help you tackle this task, I’m sharing organization ideas for the garage that you can implement right away. It might feel like a lot to do at first, but it’ll make things at home feel so much easier and efficient in the long run!

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Declutter

As I’ve mentioned in some of my other posts about getting organized, I always start with decluttering! You don’t want to spend time (or money) organizing things you don’t need or use.

We started out by doing a major purge of everything we stored in the garage. It can help to sort everything in three piles — keep, donate, and trash/recycle. This helped us realize we had broken toys that needed to be thrown away and items we weren’t using that could be given away. With a clean slate, we were able to create a garage storage system in which every item has a home.

Garage organization questions to ask yourself (and your family) when decluttering:

Is this a hobby, project, or activity that one of us is currently involved with? If you haven’t used it in the last year — or don’t see yourself using it in the next year — it’s time to part ways.
Is there anything you have multiples of that you can donate? For example, you might have accumulated extra gardening tools, sports equipment, and more over the years.
Is this item an important keepsake I will look at again, or can I enjoy it through photos?

Other garage items to consider when decluttering:

Cardboard boxes and shopping bags
Old paint (check your local recycling options!) or use a paint hardener
Canned goods, beverages, and other pantry items
Clothes and shoes, including anything stored in bins
Car supplies and accessories
Seasonal decorations
Unfinished projects that you will likely not return to

Categorize Items

Next on the garage organization list is grouping items together (I used the Marie Kondo method) so you know what you have. If you follow The Home Edit, they also do this with “zones.”

This is where garage storage shelves can come in handy! We used a wire shelving unit and large wire bins to organize our outdoor gear and activities. We also labeled every bin. That way, there’s no confusion about what belongs in each bin and everyone in your home can easily find what they need.

Here are some categories to consider for garage organization:

Sports equipment, gear, and toys
Outdoor gear, activities, and toys
Lawn and garden tools and accessories
Tools, hardware, and project supplies
Crafting tools and materials
Gym/workout equipment and accessories
Beach gear, accessories, and toys
Seasonal decorations
Cleaning supplies, including backstock
Shelf-stable food and beverages

Get Things Off the Ground

The last step of my garage organization plan was to clear the floor as much as possible so we could walk around easily and get to what we needed without having to climb over something else.

If you have items piled up on the ground or leaning against a wall, see if you can hang them up instead. My kids use their bikes every weekend, and we wanted the kids to be able to access them easily without us needing to pull the cars out of the garage. These bike wall hooks were the perfect solution. Next, we used U-shaped utility hooks to hold up the kids scooters. These might be one of my favorite organization tips for the garage!

We also mounted a tool rack along the side walls. It gets rakes, brooms, shovels, and more off the floor while taking up minimal space.

Finally, don’t forget about maximizing overhead storage! We have three overhead garage storage racks that hang from the ceiling. Two of them are hanging above the garage doors, a space that when the doors are open, would otherwise be unused. I use this space to store infrequently accessed items like seasonal decorations.

More Home Organization

I hope seeing my three-step system helps with your own garage organization! For more home organization tips like these, check out my posts: 25 Ways to Get Organized and Organization Ideas for Arts & Crafts.