Where do you put all the extra stuff that doesn’t really have a place, outdoor toys, bikes and scooters, holiday decorations, yard and gardening supplies, luggage, extra boxes and all the stuff you don’t know what to do with…the garage can often be a dumping ground for everything we don’t know what to do with. Learn what to do with all the stuff and some impactful ideas for garage organization on this Tip Tuesday episode of The Intentional Edit Podcast.
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Full Episode Transcription (not edited):
Where do you put all the extra stuff that doesn’t really have a place, outdoor toys, bikes, and scooters, holiday decorations, yard, and all that gardening stuff, all those supplies, luggage, extra boxes and all the stuff you don’t know what to do with it can end up in the garage. The garage can often be a dumping ground for everything. We don’t know what to do with, or we don’t have a place for in this episode, you will learn what to do with all that stuff. And some impactful ideas for garage organization on this tip, Tuesday episode of the intentional edit podcast. Hey friends, quick tips that make a big impact in your daily life are my favorite ways to implement systems around the house. I’ve been sharing easy strategies and my go-to organizing products for tip Tuesday on the intentional edit Instagram feed for a few years.
(00:49):
Now I’m excited to bring it to the podcast with short episodes, answering your questions every Tuesday. If you want me to answer your questions, go to the podcast page on intentional, edit.com and submit your questions there. Let’s get started on this tip Tuesday episode of the intentional edit podcast. Hey friends, thanks for joining me for this episode of the intentional edit podcast. I am happy to have you here. And I love tip Tuesday episodes because I get to answer your questions. If you have a question for me, go to intentional, edit.com and a little button pops up. That button says record. Now, all you have to do is click on the record. Now button, you can leave me a message. You don’t have to type anything out. It is so easy. I could not make this any easier for you. You click on the button, leave me a voicemail.
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It’s just like leaving a voicemail for a friend, or if you wanna make an appointment or something and you’re leaving a message, you get to ask the question, talk to me like it’s, it’s a recording. So it’s super easy. And then I can hear what your question is. Hear your frustration. It comes through so much better when I actually hear your voice and know the struggle. Ask your question, explain what is difficult. What is causing you frustration. If you have an actual problem with like a physical item or physical belongings that you want more information on how to organize, if it has to do with anything that can make your life easier. And it brings simplicity to your life at home, organizing decluttering, how to actually purge something, how to set up systems in your home. What frustrations are you having through the day in the morning, in the evening, homework time, whatever it is, where do you find yourself frustrated, overwhelmed, and really struggling, then we need to help you set up a system and good routines around that time of day.
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So things can be easier because remember the ultimate goal is to simplify, to eliminate the hard, get rid of that hard, get you out of that stuck place and bring the simplicity in, make things easier. Come up with the routines, get rid of all the excess so that you can have time to do what you truly want to do. And enjoy the little moments. We’re always gonna have tasks and routine things like chores and just things that we have to do because we maintain a home. We’re responsible for running a home, running a family, organizing that family, keeping things together. We’re responsible for so much. We make so many decisions throughout the day, just as a mom, a parent, a homeowner, or even a renter. Uh, if you have a job outside of the home, even add more decision making and more responsibility. If you are having times where you feel frustrated or you’re struggling with something, you feel overwhelmed by the clutter, by the things in your house, by the lack of organization, there are solutions for you.
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There is not a problem that is too big to solve. So go to intentional, edit.com and click on that record. Now button, tell me what you’re struggling with when you’re having that frustration. If you know that something is bothering you and you’re very specific and you want a solution because your under sync cabinet is a mess, and you want me to recommend products or the process of how to organize that. I’m happy to do that for you. I’m happy to come up with routines, help you get ideas to create systems, to solve these problems so that you can have a more simplified life go to intentional edit it’s intentional edit.com. And all you have to do is click on that record now button and leave me a message so that I can help you simplify. Now that I have that out of the way, let’s talk garages.
(04:44):
So a question came in and all she said was curious about small busy garages, no cars, and also split level homes. It’s horrible emphasized. So that that’s the struggle. They’re small spaces, split level homes. I’m gonna split this up into two different episodes because we’re going to address these a little bit different. And I wanna get into some of the details with how you can really solve the struggle. So let’s talk garage today. The main thing with purging and organizing. If you feel like you have a lack of organization and things are messy and cluttered, you have to purge first. If you wanna get organized, you cannot get organized. Unless you purge first, you have to clear the clutter to conquer the chaos. So you’re gonna tackle this garage just like you would tackle any area of your home. It’s the same as every single other space in your home, you have to purge, you have to purge and you have to purge some more.
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So if you need to get that process down, I use the same process all the time. Go listen to episode 59, episode three, episode eight episode 21. All of those episodes can help you with how to purge the purging process. What to do it. They give you questions to ask yourself so that you can release the guilt around getting rid of things, because the questions allow you to be confident in your decisions to purge. So the first step purge you have to purge, you have to declutter, you have to get rid of the things that are not necessary. And then it becomes creating zones. And how you do that is you are going to sort like items together. So you are creating these zones by sorting like items. Think sports equipment goes in one area, garden and lawn equipment goes in. Another area, automotive stuff goes in another area tools go in another area, true storage items, like holiday decor, things like that.
(06:58):
That would go in another item, beach chairs, umbrellas stuff for that camping stuff goes in another area. And I could go on and on with the different categories. All of the things that you have in the garage, you are going to separate those into different areas. Because when you’re putting back, you are going to have these areas or these zones spec specific to what those categories are. If you don’t go camping, you might not have camping things in your garage. If you don’t have little kids that have bikes and scooters and sidewalk chalk and all of that stuff, then you won’t have that section of your garage. So specific to you. The categories don’t matter. It doesn’t matter how many you have. If you are an extremely athletic family and you have a couple people that play soccer and a couple people that play baseball, you might want to really get specific on your sports section and divide.
(08:03):
So you don’t just have all the sports stuff together. You actually have it by sport and the activity. So the soccer is in one, the baseball is in another pile. The other thing that you can do is if you live in a place with very significant seasons, you could put these piles based on winter and summer, because in winter you have a whole bunch of different stuff that comes outside to play then in summertime. So it is specific to you. You will always hear me say this whenever you’re organizing, whenever you’re creating systems, whatever you’re doing, it needs to be specific to you and your home and your family in this specific season of life, you are currently in, whatever is happening at this stage is what you are organizing for. So get these things sorted. Sometimes when we sort we’re tempted to even purge and get rid of a couple more things, and that’s fine.
(09:02):
If you feel the urge to eliminate it, donate it, pass it on, give it to someone else. If it’s broken, toss it or recycle it. You have to get the sorting down because we’re going to create zones. And once you know what piles you have, that means you have identified the categories that you need to store things for. And this is where the storage comes into place. So you’re going to utilize vertical space. That means utilize the height you have in the garage. You might have a very tall ceiling or a very short one. Whatever you have utilize the height in the garage. There are things called hanging lofts that you can have that actually go above your garage door. So when your garage door is up, then you can put stuff up there. And that is for stuff that you don’t access a lot like holiday decorations that are stored in big tubs and boxes.
(09:57):
If you have an artificial Christmas tree, these are things that can go up there. A lot of people store luggage up there, things that you don’t have to get down on a regular basis every couple days, every week, every month, the think more long term storage, the more difficult it is to get to then the, you want those things to be the things that you access the least above your garage door. When your garage door is closed. Sometimes there is room between the top of the garage door track and the ceiling. You can put a shelf up there, put a lot of stuff up there, cools coolers, outdoor things, again, bins, tubs, containers of stuff like that can go up there. And when you are storing these things, you are storing them again within their zone. We just did some organizing in my garage because we’ve changed some things around since moving in.
(10:55):
And like, for example, my car parks in a different spot. So some changes had to be made because we made changes to the system and the way that we use the space. So a couple modifications and organization had to happen. And that meant putting in a track system so that we could have baskets for the outdoor stuff. Those baskets that hook onto the track system are right by the edge of the garage. They are lower. So that if like the neighborhood kids and everyone is outside and they want to play with some of the stuff in there, they can easily take what is in those baskets without having to get quickly by the cars. They could just take the stuff and go outside, play with it. We have games hanging up there, all that kind of outdoor stuff. The chairs that we would take to go to a different location, the folding chairs also right there, easy access to where those things are going to be used.
(11:56):
Now, the things like the beach chairs and the beach umbrellas and the stuff that we would take with us on that kind of a outing, those are a little bit higher up. They’re still able to get to without having to get a ladder, but they’re not in the prime location of the things that we use more often. That’s what you’re going to think about when you’re organizing your garage and tackling this space again, with the things that you will use, you can have many options for shelving systems. Shelving systems can attach onto the wall. They don’t even have to touch the floor. So if you have an area where you could have shelves that are higher up, but they can’t go down to the floor because you need to have things like bicycles and bigger items in there, then you can have shelves that are attached to the wall and they don’t go all the way to the floor.
(12:50):
If you have the ability to have a big shelving system that is on the floor, Costco has a great one. Usually it’s very industrial. It holds a lot, but make sure you adjust the shelves to make sense for what you’re storing. If you have a big container on that, all you need is enough space between shelves for that container to fit, move the shelf down or up so that you’re utilizing. You’re maximizing the space that you have. Hooks are great, too. Get things off the ground. Try to have as much off of the ground as you can. So the smaller things off the ground, put them on the shelves, hang them up. Use the hooks, utilize the space that you have. If you have dog leashes and things like that, put those right by where you walk out the door. So you grab the leash, put it on your pet.
(13:39):
And off you go to walk. The dog garages get messy because the items that don’t have a designated home often get stuffed anywhere. There is a spot. So you have to give these things a space to, to go. And a garage can be an extremely large project to tackle. So you can break this up into smaller steps. If you have an hour here or a few hours there, do the purging, do the sorting, come up with the systems that you want to use with the materials that you know that you will need to purchase. Whether it’s a hanging loft, a shelf, a hook, a track system. Any of that, just tackle it a little bit at a time when you’re working on the purging and you have piles of stuff to donate, put it in your car, get it out of there, get it away from the space so that you have more space to work. As soon as you know, you don’t want it anymore, take it to be donated. Those are a lot of garage tips. I hope that that helps you. If you have more questions for me, make sure you go to intentional, edit.com. Click on that record. Now button, ask me your questions. Tell me your struggles. And I will answer those on future tip Tuesday episodes. Thank you so much for joining me. And I will see you back here later in the week for the next episode of the intentional edit podcast,
(15:04):
That wraps up another quick episode of a tip Tuesday. If you want to be featured on intentional edits, tip Tuesday, go to intentional, edit.com, click on the podcast page in the menu bar, and then scroll all the way down to the bottom. You’ll find a button that says record, tap on that and record your question or share what is currently overwhelming to you. What is going on that you need help with? I want to know, I need to know your struggle so I can share actionable solutions to help you create simplicity in your home. If you are having this issue. I know other people are having it too, and we wanna help as many people as possible. Head over to the podcast page of intentional, edit.com and record your question for me there.
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Lauren is the founder of Intentional Edit, a home organization and lifestyle company focused on consciously editing to create efficient and organized spaces. Lauren believes that a functional home that looks and feels good has a positive influence on all aspects of life. Creating systems that allow for the home to function more efficiently, therefore, eliminating most of the clutter and chaos is her priority. While trends come and go organization is always in style!
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I’m Lauren, and I’m passionate about being organized and efficient and making spaces beautiful at the same time. I hope to inspire you to live your best organized life.
