ORC Week 2: 10 Tips for Decluttering a Garage

10 TIPS & TRICKS TO DECLUTTER & ORGANIZE A LARGE SPACE WITHOUT GOING CRAZY.

Welcome back yall to week 2 of the fall One Room Challenge! For those of you who don’t know, the One Room Challenge is a 6 week room renovation challenge hosted by Better Homes & Gardens. Twice a year, some extremely talented bloggers get together to tackle one room & complete an entire renovation in 6 weeks. Its stressful but also a whole lotta fun!

If you missed last week, we completed our garage mood board! Now all our ideas, hopes, & dreams for this garage are a little more organized. This week we cleaned & decluttered the entire garage.

~SOME AFFILIATE LINKS MAY BE PROVIDED FOR YOUR CONVENIENCE, TAKE A PEEK AT OUR PRIVACY & DISCLOSURE POLICIES~

If you have ever decluttered any room before you know it’s about as fun as a no-carb diet. The garage especially can be super overwhelming because there are spiders & also because it can become like a giant dump for all the stuff you will maybe use someday. So here are my 10 tips for decluttering a garage to make it less painful.

Before:

Ahhh I know its October but even in the month of all things spooky this before shot takes the cake!

10 Tips for Decluttering a Garage

1. Create a blueprint of how you want your garage to be set up. I used the free website Room Styler to create mine. Creating a vision of how you want things organized & stored will help you focus on what in the garage is necessary & what can be tossed. Check out my blueprint in week 1 in case you missed it.
2. Decide on your “piles.” I created three piles: (1) giveaway (2) Trash (3) keep. This will help you to at least focus your attention & not feel so overwhelmed with where everything needs to go quite yet.
3. This tip may seem silly but if your garage was anything like mine it is full of spiders, webs, & other insects so I recommend wearing gloves. It honestly made me much more productive because I wasn’t scared of what I was touching, I just dug right in.
4. Once you have everything in your 3 piles go back through your keep pile & make sure everything in that pile should really be there. Are there any broken tools or unstarted projects that you have been meaning to get to for over 3 months? If yes let’s toss it, sorry my fellow hoarders it needs to be done.
5. I did allow myself one plastic storage box of thrift store finds that I plan to upcycle. JUST 1 BOX. If it can fit (with the lid on) it can stay.
6. Gather all the small parts, (nails, screws, etc) and but them into their own separate clear plastic containers.
7. Use large plastic bins to store all your keep stuff. Christmas decorations, sporting gear, all the stuff you are keeping but don’t use daily.
8. Make labels for all your plastic containers so you know what exactly is in each bin.
9. Use a pegboard to organize small hand tools, tape measures, safety glasses, and whatnot.
10. Figure out which local charity will pick up the giveaway pile. We chose the Salvation Army because they make scheduling a pickup online super easy. Having someone pick up your giveaway pile ensures that pile will actually be leaving & will help you commit to giving away the items in that pile

Those 10 tips made this portion of the project much easier. It still took us two days to completely declutter & we still have a lot to do in this garage renovation but week 2 is officially complete!

After:

Project To-Do List:

• Clean out garage
• Paint walls & ceiling
• Build storage shelves
• Quikrete workbench
• Scrap wood storage
• Cleaning supplies organizer
• Tool pegboard
• Label storage bins
• Add cabinets above wooden workbench

Don’t forget to check out all the other talented bloggers rooms for some more design inspiration!