The Cluttered Garage

You’ve had 11 days to ease into the Cut the Crap challenge. You’ve been busy decluttering your house and cleaning out files, closets, cabinets, and entire rooms. It’s time to venture into the area where clutter goes to die.

The garage (or shed or storage unit) is spacious and you don’t have to look at it every day. Clutter in the living room, bedroom, or kitchen is right there in your face every time you go through the room. The garage, however, ends up being a handy place to shove things you don’t want to deal with right now. Out of sight, out of mind. Even if you park your car in there, it’s easy to put on the blinders. Just step out of the car, get your things, and dash into the house. Whew! You’ve escaped the clutter zone one more time.

Instead of ignoring it and hoping maybe it will go away on its own, how about dealing with that mess once and for all? Let’s tackle it and get the job done. The relief you will feel at no longer having to avoid this task will be immense and the space you will free up could be immense as well. You may even make some money selling what you no longer want to keep!

The problem with me advising you on how to deal with your garage clutter is that I don’t know what’s in there. But, I suspect there’s a decent chance that you don’t know what’s in there either. You’ve got to get your hands dirty and find out.

What usually ends up in garages? Tools, garden supplies, car stuff, camping gear, and sports equipment are common garage residents, and for good reason. They’re typically not used in the house, they track in dirt and grime, and they take up a lot of space. What else? Holiday decorations. Broken things that you plan to fix someday. The kids’ old stuff. Old furniture. Junk you don’t know where to put. A box packed for Goodwill that just hasn’t made it out of the garage yet. Do these sound familiar?

Does just thinking about the mess in the garage make you break out in a cold sweat? How can you even begin to sort through it when you can barely move around in there? The approach I’ve found that works best, for me, is to remove everything from the garage. This allows me to clean the structure, shelves, and cabinets thoroughly. Then I can sort through everything in a more spacious area (the yard or driveway).

If you don’t have a driveway or yard, good weather, or simply don’t want your neighbors to see all your crap, you won’t be able to take everything out. Do what you can to make some open space in the garage. Pull your car out (if you even had room to keep it in there in the first place), push and shove everything out of the middle, and work on one area at a time. This will be more challenging than taking everything out all at once, but the pay-off is worth it.

Let’s get started. Remember the general clutter guidelines: keep only what you use and/or what you love. Everything else goes.

Throw all the garbage away. Anything that can’t be salvaged, repaired, re-used, or recycled should just be tossed. Set aside hazardous materials must be taken to your local HazMat collection center.

Make a pile of everything you don’t want to keep. Decide as you go whether you want to give it away or sell it. Set up some empty boxes for charity, freecycle, craigslist or ebay, and/or a yard sale.

Before you put anything back into the garage, decide how you want to organize it. It doesn’t do you any good if you can’t find it or get to it later, so put some thought into this. Group things together logically. All the tools in one area, garden supplies in another, camping gear together, and so on.

How do you decide what to keep and what to get rid of? I can’t make those decisions for you, but here are some suggestions.

Tools
Keep what you use, including specialty tools that are hard to replace and essential for projects that come up periodically. Consider getting rid of broken tools that can’t be repaired, duplicates you don’t need, and tools you never ever use.

Garden supplies
I’m hesitant to suggest you get rid of any garden supplies. If you are not using them, now is the time to start. Rinse the dust off your tools, get your hands dirty, and start growing some of your own food….but not until you finish cleaning out the garage!

If you have garden chemicals sitting around from your earlier non-organic days, take them to your local Hazardous Materials pick-up. Most cities or counties provide a time and place to drop these off. Contact your local government for details.

Car stuff
Keep tools if you do your own car maintenance and repairs. Changing your own oil is definitely cheaper, but make sure to take the old oil to a recycling place. Look through your cleaning supplies. Do you need three different kinds of soap and five cans of wax for your car? Probably not. See this article for advice on green-washing your car. Toss the fuzzy dice.

Camping gear
Check the condition of your camping gear. It will be a miserable camping trip if your sleeping bag is wet and moldy, if your tent has a huge tear in the top, or your camping stove no longer works. Clean and repair your gear, and then pack it back up properly. When deciding what to keep, think about whether the gear would be useful in an emergency. I’ve mentioned emergency supplies a couple of times before. These posts might be useful to review at this time.

Sports equipment
If you don’t use it, get rid of it. No excuses. If your kids have outgrown it, get rid of it. There are other kids out there that would love to use it.

Holiday decorations
I’m a grinch, so you might not want to take my advice on this one. I don’t decorate for any holiday other than Christmas and I’m starting to really rethink that one. My sweetie doesn’t know it yet, but we’ll be culling some of our decorations again. As far as other holidays go, I don't want to store the decorations for 11 ½ months a year. Do you really get enough enjoyment out of their brief use to justify having that clutter the rest of the year? Or, could you find other ways to decorate seasonally? Make a decorative meal….that gets eaten. Make paper crafts….that can be recycled. Make your own greeting cards. Make a holiday mosaic from your own photos. Get creative and get uncluttered!

Broken things
C’mon now, are you really ever going to fix this stuff? Chances are, the answer is no. I know, I know, you have great intentions but you just haven’t had the time. So, is that about to change? Do you suddenly have some free time to repair these things? Maybe it’s time to think about letting go. List them on freecycle for someone else that can repair them or use them for parts.

I’ll admit, there are some of you that probably will get around to fixing this stuff. And I’d like to encourage others to learn how to do repairs. It is, and will be, a very useful skill. Only you can decide if you want to select useful items that you think you will repair. Get rid of the broken knick-knacks and useless crap, though. Then set aside some time, soon, to make the repairs. Setting a time limit on this one would be a good idea.

Kids’ stuff
Are you holding on to every art project your children have ever done because you think they will want to skip down memory lane after they grow up? Or, are you holding onto these things because you’re having trouble seeing how fast they are growing up? Do everyone a favor and take photos to keep those memories instead.

Is your garage being used as a storage unit for your grown children’s old furniture? If they have moved out on their own, they need to take responsibility for their own belongings. It’s part of being a responsible adult.

Old furniture
Speaking of furniture, how much is in your garage? When you got that new couch, did you move the old one into the garage? Why?! Do you sit out there or do you use it as a handy place to stack a bunch of other old junk? If that old couch, table, or lamp still has some life left in it, pass it along to someone who will actually use it in his or her house. Sell it or give it away – just get it outta there!

Miscellaneous Junk
If there is not an appropriate place in the house for this stuff, if it’s not being used, and if it’s so unloved that it’s been shoved out into the dusty garage, why do you still have it? Obviously it’s crap you don’t really want. Instead of stashing it in your garage, get rid of it!

Donations
This is the time to load the boxes of stuff you decluttered from the house into your car and drop them off at your favorite charity. If you don’t want to do that, list them on freecycle tonight.

It’s fine if you want to make a little money, but don’t put it off. Valuables have no actual monetary value if they are just sitting there collecting dust. To realize the value, you have to sell them. List your things on craigslist or ebay, or set a yard sale date.

Personally, I plan to hold a big yard sale in May. This gives me time to declutter the entire house. And in May, people will have received their tax refunds and be starting to get their ‘Economic Stimulus’ checks. I have designated an area strictly for the yard sale goodies. They are packed into boxes to take up the least amount of space. I’ve got a lot of yard sale experience and will share that in another post, but first we need to sort through everything.

Have a great weekend, get that garage (or shed or storage unit!) cleaned out, and remember to Strut your Clutter here on Sunday.