How To Maximize Space and Organization with a Garage Cleaning Service

Every house needs a room where we put the stuff that doesn’t quite belong anywhere else:

• The bulky sporting equipment
• Boxes of unused yet important things
• Keepsakes that don’t make sense anywhere inside the house

The time will eventually come to clean out that room, which more often becomes the garage. Don’t be intimidated by garage cleaning! With the help of a garage cleanout service and these valuable tips, you’ll be halfway to organized in no time.

Where To Start: Begin With The Basics

There are some tips to start with that are so universally practiced you can probably intuit them.

First, set aside at least a full weekend for garage clearout. It’s a time-consuming process, and you don’t want anything else distracting you.

It’s also helpful to create a pile organization system. Designate areas where you’ll put items intended for sale, donation, trash, and other categories. Once you have basics like these down, you can move on to our five essential tips.

5 Helpful Tips to Maximize Garage Space and Organization

1. Draft a Floor Plan of Your Garage

It’s hard to clean and organize a space if you don’t understand its layout. If you create a floorplan of your garage, complete with the marking of doors, windows, and unusable spaces, you’ll have an excellent aid for future organization.

Grab an erasable pencil and the largest sheet of paper you have (or boot up your tablet’s drawing app, if you’re creative!). Draw the rough shape of your garage and note the exact dimensions on its sides. Mark the windows, doors, light switches, where your car goes (if you park it there), and other unusable spaces.

Once you have a 2D representation of your total garage space, you’ll have a much easier time deciding what objects you have room for and which can go.

2. Create an Inventory and Keep/Toss List

There’s a strong correlation between an unkept orunclean space and psychological ills like depression and anxiety. Good domestic hygiene is a gateway to good mental and emotional hygiene.

Once you have your floor plan, grab another sheet of paper and inventory every single object in your garage. The principle behind this step is the same as the previous step: once you have a visual representation of everything in your garage that you can take in all at once, you’ll have a much easier time deciding what stays and what goes.

You can even subdivide your list into different categories, like lawn care tools, sports gear, and boxes of clothing. Once you see everything written out before you, it’s much easier to spot duplicates and unnecessary items.

3. Declutter and Clean

Now that you have a list of what you currently have, it’s time to decide what you want to keep. It helps some people to create a new list that sorts the items into what stays and what goes. It helps other people to drag those items into piles, especially if you’re already thinking about where the discarded items will go.

This is a critical step in the cleaning process as well. Once you’ve emptied your garage of the discarded items, remove everything else too. This is one of the rare opportunities you’ll ever get to clean your garage from top to bottom with nothing in the way. Do a deep clean and give your storage space a brand new foundation on which to start over.

This step can be intimidatingly labor-intensive. So if you need professional garage clearout services, we understand – Nixxit can help.

4. Use Your Walls

Your space is clean, and your belongings are ready to be moved back in. You have the opportunity to remake the organizational system of your garage. And if you didn’t have one before, you now have the chance to build one from the ground up.

Vertical organizers are common in garages because they’re so effective. Not only do they hang your belongings in clear sight so they can be easily retrieved and accounted for, they get your stuff off the floor. With more floor space, you can store more, or even move in items you’ve always wanted but never had the space for, like a treadmill.

Another pro tip: open shelves are always preferable to closed cabinets because they show you what you have.

5. Plan Selling and Donation Ahead

With the “keep” items taken care of, it’s time to address the discards. If you haven’t already separated your discards into piles, do so now. Make one for items intended for donation, one for resale, and another for junk.

You might also throw a “maybe” pile in there for items you want to move back into the garage, and a pile for items your friends or family members might be interested in taking off your hands.

Which Items Should Not Be Stored In Your Garage?

Staples of garage storage, like paint, can become hazardous when stored improperly. Refer back to your handy inventory and cross reference what you kept against research about shelf-life and storage methods.

Some items need cool storage, some dry and warm. Some keep indefinitely, whereas others expire. Here are the items you don’t want to store in your garage:

• Paint: Paint can spoil in extreme heat or cold, so only store if your garage is temperature controlled.
• Propane: Propane is a fire hazard and can leak, spreading noxious fumes.
• Pet food: Rodents and other scavengers can rip open bags and ruin your tidy floor.
• Refrigerator: Your electric bill will be through the roof constantly cooling down a fridge in a non-temperature-controlled room.
• Paper goods: These can easily decompose and become fodder for rodent nests.

Frequently Asked Questions

How Do I Clean and Organize My Garage?

A plan is the best aid in cleaning and organizing your garage. Create a step-by-step plan that details how you’re going to declutter, when you’ll clean, and how you’ll restock the garage once it’s clean.

How Do I Maximize My Garage Workspace?

Rely on vertical organizers and other handy hacks at stores like Target and Home Depot. Think creatively about how you store your stuff.

How Much Should I Pay Someone To Organize My Garage?

When hiring professional garage organizers, you shouldn’t think about price, but volume. How much do you want them to do for you? The whole process of decluttering, cleaning, and organizing? Or can you take care of decluttering and cleaning yourself?

Once you have a sense of scope, you can come up with a good range for price.

How Do You Organize an Overwhelming Garage?

It’s all about the process. Having a step-by-step plan, an inventory, and an ample amount of time goes a long way.

Need Garage Cleanout in the Bay Area? We Can Help!

Even if you create the best, most comprehensive cleanout plan in the world, it’s still an incredibly daunting task. There’s no shame in hiring a garage cleanout service like Nixxit.

Nixxit’sgarage cleanout services in the Bay Area, CA, can tackle any garage of any size. Our pros handle all the heavy lifting, and we’ll take care of disposal too. We specialize in green waste disposal, so you can take pride that your cleanup job will be done in an environmentally responsible way. Plus, we are also a Certified Bay Area Green Business.

Contact Nixxit to schedule your free garage cleanout estimate today.