Garages are extremely underrated – and heavily under-utilised! You don’t appreciate how beneficial it is to have a garage until you see a home without one. Maybe you lived without a garage all your life, but now you’ve moved into a new home with a lovely bit of extra space to the side. It might look small in comparison to your house, but garages provide way more room than you think.
As a result, it’s crucial to get the most out of your garage – but what does that entail?!
Your goal should be to maximise garage space, allowing you to use it as more than just a storage area. You’ll see some space-saving tactics and ideas in this blog that’ll teach you to use as much of your garage as possible. This will mean you can store more items but also leave the space open for other functions – like a home gym, a safe place for your car or an office.
Make Use Of Overhead Space
Be honest with yourself: are you making good use of your garage’s overhead space? All garages will come with rafters just like a home – it’s almost like a mini attic for your garage. These won’t normally be boarded up, so you’re basically left with loads of open space at the top of your garage.
You can already see where we’re going with this! Make use of the overhead space by boarding it up and creating a new storage area. This is perfect for light things like cardboard boxes with Christmas decorations, etc. Convert the overhead space into a little attic, and then install a fold-down ladder for you to climb up and grab things when you need them. Depending on the size of your garage and how tall it is, you could just use a regular step ladder to head up there.
Imagine how much you can move from your garage floor up into the rafters in one simple move. It instantly creates more floor space – and this tip alone could be all you’re looking for. If you want to convert your garage into a home office but lack the floor space, then moving things into the mini attic can create enough room for a desk, chair and everything else. All the while, you’re not compromising the garage’s role as a storage area to keep things out of your home.
Implement Vertical Storage Solutions
Okay, you’ve cleared a lot of stuff from the floor and moved it overhead, but there are still items and pieces of equipment taking up space in your garage. It looks like a lot of stuff, though you can seamlessly open up more garage space without getting rid of any items. Once again, you’re making use of your garage’s height, yet this time, it’s more about vertical storage solutions.
Walls exist to support structures, but they also provide you with lots of unused vertical space. This is true for any room inside your house, as well. Think of all the empty vertical space in your living room and how you can use this to your advantage for additional storage space. Inside your home, you’re looking at things like shelving or large bookcases to make full use of verticality. It clears up floor space in your rooms without forcing you to throw things away.
In your garage, you can use all kinds of vertical storage solutions to open up the floor space. The best example that jumps to mind is a vertical shelving system. This is the type of thing they use in warehouses or self-storage units – but you can get small ones for your garage with ease. It’s effectively a way of taking a section of floor space and making it capable of storing two or three times as many items. The original patch of floor space now has two tiers of shelving stacked on top of it for you to move nearby items off the floor and onto the shelves.
You don’t even need that many vertical shelving systems in your garage – you could have one across the back wall, or one on one side of the wall, etc. It depends on how much floor space you want to free up, and there’s another great benefit to this idea, too. Shelving systems like these make it easier to navigate the clutter. You can find things with ease because they’re stacked on racks/shelves rather than bundled together on the floor.
Hang Items On The Walls
While we’re talking about vertical storage and garage walls, consider one other solution: hanging items on your garage walls with hooks. You might think this sounds crazy, but it’s a genius way of dealing with things like gardening equipment and DIY tools. There’s a massive range of heavy-duty storage hooks you can use all over your home to create additional storage space out of nothing.
Instead of lying your power tools on the floor, you can attach them to the wall to free up loads of floor space. The same goes for things like garden waste bags – or even a foldable lawn mower. Think about all the gear in your garage for your cars, like pressure washers, tyre inflation kits and so on. These will no longer be lying on the floor and can be easier to keep track of when they’re attached to the walls.
Plus, if things are suitable for hanging on the garage walls, this means you create more space in your other new storage areas! There’s more room in the rafters for larger objects – or more space on the new storage racks. It all comes together to create a garage that looks way more spacious and is now big enough to be a little home gym or office.
Install A Space-Saving Door
All of these tactics will help you save space in your garage, though one area remains a cause for concern: the main entry point. Some garages are detached from houses, while others have a door connecting the garage to another part of the home – usually the kitchen. Regardless, there’s usually always a main entry point: the big door designed for you to fit a car through.
After all, that’s the original purpose for a garage, so they’re still built to be somewhat functional for cars. The problem is that a lot of these doors open in such a way that they take up loads of internal space at the front of the garage. You miss out on a huge chunk of floor space to use as you please – which often means you can’t fit a car in the garage because you also need it for storage, and the space at the back is taken up. Or, you don’t have enough space to fit the things required for it to be a home gym, office or washing room.
The solution to this problem is simple: find space-saving garage doors that provide more functionality. You’ll find doors that are designed to rise up and almost fold in on themselves to reduce how much interior space they take up. There are so many cool mechanisms and technologies involved in modern garage doors to ensure they’re the least of your worries.
With the right door in place, you can genuinely gain an extra few feet of garage floor space. Suddenly, your garage is long enough to fit a car while also being used to store loads of things with your new storage solutions. Or, there’s space for some gym equipment alongside the storage stuff – it’s the very definition of getting the most out of your garage space!
Declutter & Find Alternative Storage Spaces
Can you think of some other storage spaces that make sense for certain items instead of putting them in your garage? Take your gardening equipment, for example. Yes, you can hang stuff on the walls or place them on storage racks – but could you store them in a more relevant place, like your garden?
If there’s space for a little shed in your garden, then this lets you remove all the gardening equipment from your garage to free up more space there. Likewise, think about things that should be stored in your home because it makes more sense. For instance, items that rarely get used and can be kept in storage for years on end. Doesn’t it make more logical sense to keep these in your attic where you’ll never need them?
Try to declutter your garage and keep it full of items that you’ll either need fairly regularly or that make sense to be in this part of your home.
Photo by Curtis Adams
Take all of these tactics on board to save space in your garage and make it more functional than ever before. If you want to use it solely as a storage solution, then the ideas create more space and let you store way more in a small area. However, if you also want your garage to double up as a parking space for your car or a home gym/office, then the tactics let you do this by freeing up more space to add things to your garage. You make the most out of it, which helps you gain a valuable addition to your home.
Garages are extremely underrated – and heavily under-utilised! You don’t appreciate how beneficial it is to have a garage until you see a home without one. Maybe you lived without a garage all your life, but now you’ve moved into a new home with a lovely bit of extra space to the side. It might look small in comparison to your house, but garages provide way more room than you think.
As a result, it’s crucial to get the most out of your garage – but what does that entail?!
Your goal should be to maximise garage space, allowing you to use it as more than just a storage area. You’ll see some space-saving tactics and ideas in this blog that’ll teach you to use as much of your garage as possible. This will mean you can store more items but also leave the space open for other functions – like a home gym, a safe place for your car or an office.
Make Use Of Overhead Space
Be honest with yourself: are you making good use of your garage’s overhead space? All garages will come with rafters just like a home – it’s almost like a mini attic for your garage. These won’t normally be boarded up, so you’re basically left with loads of open space at the top of your garage.
You can already see where we’re going with this! Make use of the overhead space by boarding it up and creating a new storage area. This is perfect for light things like cardboard boxes with Christmas decorations, etc. Convert the overhead space into a little attic, and then install a fold-down ladder for you to climb up and grab things when you need them. Depending on the size of your garage and how tall it is, you could just use a regular step ladder to head up there.
Imagine how much you can move from your garage floor up into the rafters in one simple move. It instantly creates more floor space – and this tip alone could be all you’re looking for. If you want to convert your garage into a home office but lack the floor space, then moving things into the mini attic can create enough room for a desk, chair and everything else. All the while, you’re not compromising the garage’s role as a storage area to keep things out of your home.
Implement Vertical Storage Solutions
Okay, you’ve cleared a lot of stuff from the floor and moved it overhead, but there are still items and pieces of equipment taking up space in your garage. It looks like a lot of stuff, though you can seamlessly open up more garage space without getting rid of any items. Once again, you’re making use of your garage’s height, yet this time, it’s more about vertical storage solutions.
Walls exist to support structures, but they also provide you with lots of unused vertical space. This is true for any room inside your house, as well. Think of all the empty vertical space in your living room and how you can use this to your advantage for additional storage space. Inside your home, you’re looking at things like shelving or large bookcases to make full use of verticality. It clears up floor space in your rooms without forcing you to throw things away.
In your garage, you can use all kinds of vertical storage solutions to open up the floor space. The best example that jumps to mind is a vertical shelving system. This is the type of thing they use in warehouses or self-storage units – but you can get small ones for your garage with ease. It’s effectively a way of taking a section of floor space and making it capable of storing two or three times as many items. The original patch of floor space now has two tiers of shelving stacked on top of it for you to move nearby items off the floor and onto the shelves.
You don’t even need that many vertical shelving systems in your garage – you could have one across the back wall, or one on one side of the wall, etc. It depends on how much floor space you want to free up, and there’s another great benefit to this idea, too. Shelving systems like these make it easier to navigate the clutter. You can find things with ease because they’re stacked on racks/shelves rather than bundled together on the floor.
Hang Items On The Walls
While we’re talking about vertical storage and garage walls, consider one other solution: hanging items on your garage walls with hooks. You might think this sounds crazy, but it’s a genius way of dealing with things like gardening equipment and DIY tools. There’s a massive range of heavy-duty storage hooks you can use all over your home to create additional storage space out of nothing.
Instead of lying your power tools on the floor, you can attach them to the wall to free up loads of floor space. The same goes for things like garden waste bags – or even a foldable lawn mower. Think about all the gear in your garage for your cars, like pressure washers, tyre inflation kits and so on. These will no longer be lying on the floor and can be easier to keep track of when they’re attached to the walls.
Plus, if things are suitable for hanging on the garage walls, this means you create more space in your other new storage areas! There’s more room in the rafters for larger objects – or more space on the new storage racks. It all comes together to create a garage that looks way more spacious and is now big enough to be a little home gym or office.
Install A Space-Saving Door
All of these tactics will help you save space in your garage, though one area remains a cause for concern: the main entry point. Some garages are detached from houses, while others have a door connecting the garage to another part of the home – usually the kitchen. Regardless, there’s usually always a main entry point: the big door designed for you to fit a car through.
After all, that’s the original purpose for a garage, so they’re still built to be somewhat functional for cars. The problem is that a lot of these doors open in such a way that they take up loads of internal space at the front of the garage. You miss out on a huge chunk of floor space to use as you please – which often means you can’t fit a car in the garage because you also need it for storage, and the space at the back is taken up. Or, you don’t have enough space to fit the things required for it to be a home gym, office or washing room.
The solution to this problem is simple: find space-saving garage doors that provide more functionality. You’ll find doors that are designed to rise up and almost fold in on themselves to reduce how much interior space they take up. There are so many cool mechanisms and technologies involved in modern garage doors to ensure they’re the least of your worries.
With the right door in place, you can genuinely gain an extra few feet of garage floor space. Suddenly, your garage is long enough to fit a car while also being used to store loads of things with your new storage solutions. Or, there’s space for some gym equipment alongside the storage stuff – it’s the very definition of getting the most out of your garage space!
Declutter & Find Alternative Storage Spaces
Can you think of some other storage spaces that make sense for certain items instead of putting them in your garage? Take your gardening equipment, for example. Yes, you can hang stuff on the walls or place them on storage racks – but could you store them in a more relevant place, like your garden?
If there’s space for a little shed in your garden, then this lets you remove all the gardening equipment from your garage to free up more space there. Likewise, think about things that should be stored in your home because it makes more sense. For instance, items that rarely get used and can be kept in storage for years on end. Doesn’t it make more logical sense to keep these in your attic where you’ll never need them?
Try to declutter your garage and keep it full of items that you’ll either need fairly regularly or that make sense to be in this part of your home.
Take all of these tactics on board to save space in your garage and make it more functional than ever before. If you want to use it solely as a storage solution, then the ideas create more space and let you store way more in a small area. However, if you also want your garage to double up as a parking space for your car or a home gym/office, then the tactics let you do this by freeing up more space to add things to your garage. You make the most out of it, which helps you gain a valuable addition to your home.
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