My Garage Organization

A lot of the Pinterest pictures that show garage organizations look pretty, but at a closer look I ask myself, how would I be able to get to that at a moments notice? Sure it looks pretty way up high ... and 3 ft over my head. Yet it's not convenient nor reliable. Another cute but totally inconvenient idea (or look) is buckets hanging from the wall to allow for what you believe to be easy access to gloves, tools, etc. Except if you are in a rush or completely exhausted at the end of the day and that glove falls down twice after attempting to place it into the sideways bucket, you're gonna start cursing yourself (or your wife) for putting it there. While the images are yes adorable, they are not man-friendly.

Here's the before pictures of my garage. Oh and before you say or think anything, the pictures below were all taken by my cell phone, so the quality is not amazing but the image is at least transparent.

The photo below may look sort of organized ... but honestly, I couldn't access anything or get to it all. I'm only 5 feet tall so many of the items were and (still are) out of my reach. I would need to have a ladder on hand to reach the high-end things, or just ask the hubby to get it.

Here are a few pictures of my work during the process. The pegboard had been there prior but not a lot of pegboard hooks were there. I bought two extra packages at $6 or $7 each and filled up the whole space available to me on the peg board. 

I made the cheap (and ugly) white cabinets into a dark gray finish. I think it made the cabinets appear more expensive and "custom-made". The handles stayed white but I did clean them with goo-gone and regular house cleaner. They had black finger prints on them which wasn't appealing. 

In between the two cabinets, there was an empty hole there. My hubby had an office chair there which has now been removed. Like what man sits down at his workstation, seriously? No man I know or have seen when working in the garage. They all stand up while they work. 

The empty hole was replaced with an old bookshelf that used to be indoors and upstairs. It held a variety of language books my hubby collected (I guess?) and some CDs. The CDs were donated to the library as they are now my new media storage units. If I want my CDs, I'll just loan them out from the library but I don't think that will happen anymore due to Spotify having all my music selection for me. Back to the bookshelf. It was one from Target. As you can see in the image the last shelf of the bookshelf closest to the concrete floor has no bottom end. All it has are legs. That used to be the top shelf, which was attached to an ugly arch design that had a rose design carved or plastered onto it. Once I figured out how to dismantle that from the bookshelf, I flipped it and painted the shelves the same exact color as the cabinets. I like how it appears that it came with the unit. It holds his larger electric tools nicely. I also like how that space between the cabinets is  no longer a waste of space. 

This is the end result and while I know there are still things atop hanging by the garage springs (top left), I didn't want to do that without my hubby's presence around so that needed to wait. I added shelf racks (see center top of image) but the shelves I had currently on hand were too short. I figured I'd measure up and find ones that fit... eventually, but not today. I think I'd put items that aren't used often up there. 

Odd angular section but it works for hanging miscellaneous things. I couldn't take the nails out at all so had to do with how they were put in... which by the way was awful. None of the nails lined up or evenly spaced out. I tried to take them out with the hammer but to no avail. I dealt with the the setup for now and hung miscellaneous items up. As you may have noticed now, the garage wall was painted! It definitely makes for a cooler-looking garage! My only issue is when I had to get another can of paint... the girl did not match the color correctly and it dried a different shade of gray. The paint can was not returnable either since I had opened it and used it without realizing until it dried that it was a different gray. It looked terrible and I wasn't about to spend another $10 on a can of paint on her mistake. I decided to create a middle line to make teh switch look "intentional" ...

See the switch? I do.

I painted our white dirty door also made it a glossy brown so it looks super expensive now. And while it seems like everyone on Pinterest has stairs that lead to the door, I do not. Poo.

Here's the rest of the garage. Huge space but just doesn't seem to be 100% working for me yet. I still have lawn materials that need to be found a home out by the A/C units by the side of the house. I have no idea where to even begin thinking of putting those! My man has a lot of things. In FL that was required (where we used to live) yet here in AZ... lawn items aren't a priority considering it doesn't rain or snow that often, but it does! 

The one bin in the middle is the only one i cannot find room for... he'll have to help me out with that one.