Around this time of year you’ll probably be lugging your lawn mower and other tools in and out of your garage regularly, and dumping them back in there once you’ve finished. That’s all well and good at the moment, but when it gets to late September when you shut up shop on garden care for another year, you should really think about putting things away properly, and just generally making sure your garage is tidy. If you don’t you could be in for a nasty shock next spring when you go to get the secateurs out, only to find they are buried deep under a messy pile of tools, rusted shut!
So, it’s better to tidy up sooner rather than later. In fact it’s better to tidy as you go, rather than be faced with a whole garage worth of clutter at the end of the season.
Here are some tips for maintaining a well organised and safe, garage or shed:
- Use shelves! The easiest way to keep things off the floor and in a manageable position that you can actually get to is to use shelves. These need not be expensive, and in fact old bookshelves can often be perfectly adequately used for this purpose. Find an old book case, and you won’t even have to worry about fixing the shelves to the wall (although it might still be wise to do so)
- Use nails and screws as hangers for rakes and other lightweight tools. Ok, so they aren’t pretty, but screws and nails make perfect simple hangers to keep things off the floor. Just make sure you don’t hang anything too heavy from a single nail
- Group tools according to how frequently you use them. It sounds obvious, but there’s no point having tools you use least frequently in the most accessible position at the expense of something you need day to day. So keep this in mind when devising any sort of organisational plan
- Use pallets to keep things dry. In the unfortunate event that your garage were to flood, keeping larger things off the floor on a pallet (such a the lawn mower) will keep them dry and less likely to be damaged by water. The best thing about pallets of course is that they are readily available for little to no money, just have a drive around your local industrial estate and you’re likely to find many businesses who are happy to part with a few.
- Create a plan! Whether you draw it, list it, or use an app, a plan can make the task of organising your garage more logical and less haphazard. It’s also better to plan something on paper and find it’s not the best idea than to spend an afternoon breaking your back moving everything around to discover the same thing.
