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Your garage serves many purposes throughout the year. In the winter months, its most important function is typically housing your car. Often times, the months prior to those colder winter months are when the garage is busy being used as a center of activity.
Summer home projects, landscaping changes, and many other activities can turn your garage into unusable space for storing your car. Other than just a general cleaning, sometimes you have to take it a step further and look at organization and cleaning out. This can feel like a daunting task. If you want help, there are house cleaning and organization companies that can help make this task more manageable. Here are some tips to help get your garage ready for winter.
Getting started
Doing heavy clean up starts first with sorting and cleaning out. Use tarps to create different areas for collection. You can use your garage floor, or take advantage of space in the yard. Sort between things that need to be donated, remove trash and return stuff that found its way into the garage.
Once you have gotten the garage cleared out it’s time to take a look at the garage and see if there are areas that may need some attention. Repairs are easier to manage when the garage is cleaned out. It may be some new caulking on windows, or as simple as updating lighting. This is also the best opportunity to take a look at the floor. Small oil spills can be cleaned up with a scrub brush and some oven cleaner. However, if the floor needs a completely new finish, there are some excellent products that can re-coat your garage floor including paints that have a texture for slipping safety.
Now, take a look at your space and see what is available to use for storage.
Winter supplies
Separate out any items that you might need for winter like covers for landscape plants for those really cold nights.
Tools and work supplies
No matter how little or how much you have, if you can’t get to your tools and supplies when you need them, they won’t be of help. Having good storage for tools and household repair supplies is important. Organizational units and containers are readily available to make this job easier.
Bicycles
Get those bikes off the ground and up on hooks. There are great wall mount systems for bikes that can get your bikes up and out of the way, but still remain easily accessible.
Garden equipment
Gardening tools, such as rakes, shovels, hoes and hand tools need to be up on hooks. You can turn a simple peg board into great storage for your hand tools, and then larger two prong hooks for the larger bulkier tools.
Sports/play equipment
Creative storage centers can make storing a variety of sports and play equipment much easier. Then when you want to pull out the football on Thanksgiving Day to enjoy a little fun with the family it will be easy to find.
Other storage needs
Storage containers that have tight lids and are not overly cumbersome are a great way to store collections of holiday items, helmets and other protective gear and more. Just make sure that the storage containers are stackable and the right size for your space needs and what you are storing. If they are too large you will have difficulty accessing them. Label the containers so that you don’t have to search through them then use a piece of clear packing tape to put over the labels to protect them from damage.
Whether you hire some help or do it yourself, when you’re finished with the cleaning and organization of your garage, your cars will be easy to park and it will be more comfortable maneuvering around them. And your garage will be ready for winter.