How to Organize a Garage

When you come into your garage you want to feel peace, not chaos. That's exactly what my team and I set out to do in these garages and tool sheds. Here are some ideas on how to store your items along with visual inspiration from our previous work.

Garage Categories

Every category needs a home. Generally in a garage there are 7 main categories:

Toys
Tools
Garden
Deep Storage
Home Decor
Sports/Workout
Incoming/Outgoing

Homes for Categories

There are many different ways to create homes for categories. For this post I wanted to focus on my favorite budget friendly storage ideas, tubs, filing cabinets and hooks for the wall.

🗄️Filing Cabinets

Essentially we are looking for big drawers to hide all of the little things that cause visual chaos. I love filing cabinets because so many businesses and schools are donating them. It gives a craftsman vibe for less than $200.

Filing cabinets are great for categories such as:

Small Tools
Pool/Swimming Gear
Balls/Toys
Automotive

📦Tubs & Shelves

Tubs are basically luxury boxes. Because we move so often, I found that keeping deep storage items, or a large group of items together is much easier than having to pack/unpack every time we move.

Shelves are import to not only store the tubs up and off the ground but also because not everything is going to fit into a tub. You'll need space for things like carseats, portable grills, and other odd shape items.

Tubs are great for storing a large group of items, especially groups that need to be transported together such as:

Holiday Decor/Lighting
Sports Gear
Camping Gear
Home Decor

The Wall

The wall is a great place to add hooks, rods, and/or peg boards.

Large Tools
Bikes
Sports Bags
Tennis Rackets
Fishing Rods

Take a look at these garage transformations to get inspired for your next garage organization project. Or schedule a consultation to have out team transform your garage.

A 2-Day Garage & Toolshed Transformation

This was a satisfying 2-day garage transformation, and at the end, you’ll see the included tool shed. Let's see how our above budget-friendly solutions transformed this garage.

Filing Cabinets

I love that we were able to find four matching filing cabinets for the back wall for just $160 total. This allowed us to create beautiful and functional hidden storage with room left over. Here is what we used the filing cabinets for on this specific project.

Toys: 1 filing cabinet was used for toys like bubbles, balls, chalk, and other loose toys. The drawers didn't need to be micro-organized because it's easier for kids (and parents) to grab and drop items.
Swimming: In this filing cabinet are things like inflatables, air pump, pool toys, life vests, goggles, flippers, etc.
Automotive: Things like funnels, oil, spray cleaners/conditioners, buffers, wax, cloths and spare auto parts.

Tubs

I get these grey tubs from Target for $8.

Camping Equipment: Two tubs were dedicated to camping supplies – one for food supplies and one for camping tools and accessories. Now, they can simply grab the tub, throw it in the car, and be ready to go.
Rock Climbing Gear: We organized all the family’s rock climbing gear into one tub, making it easy to transport to the gym without forgetting anything.
Sentimental Items: The fourth tub was used for sentimental like diplomas, pictures in frames, and other mementos. While I usually recommend storing sentimental items inside the house, the owner preferred having them in the garage.

The Wall

Peg Board: They already had a large peg board with hooks, which was great for the tennis rackets, but for the backpacks, I installed a super sturdy iron clothing rod over the peg board. That way the backpacks would fit flush and not bulge out.
Fishing Rod Rack: I searched through many different fishing rod racks and this one was my favorite because they are customizable in width which allowed us to add paddles too.

Final Thoughts

I love how easy it is to take the bikes on and off the bike rack. It's very sturdy and didn't even need to be secured to the floor.

While I loved the natural wood, half of it was already painted so I knew to finish it would make a huge difference. We kept some of the natural wood to keep the cozy feeling this garage had.

The end result was a functional and organized garage that met all the owner’s needs.

The Tool Shed

Filing Cabinets

We added a tall filing cabinet to the left wall, which provided ample storage for small power tools and their accessories. This includes:

Sanders
Drills
Saws
Accessories
Ropes

Tubs

We used tubs to store larger items that needed to be grouped together:

Tarps and Cloths: One tub is dedicated to tarps and cloths, keeping them neatly folded and ready for use.
Garden Seeds and Supplies: Another tub stores garden seeds and fertilizer, ensuring they are kept safe from rodents.

Walls

Pegboards are great for:

Hand Tools: Hammers, screwdrivers, pliers, and wrenches. Things you want to visually see, and grab and put back easily.

Mobile Organizing

For gardening tasks, we added a heavy duty mobile gardening tool bag to ensure all tools are conveniently at hand. This bag is perfect for storing and transporting:

Hand Tools
Garden Seeds
Gloves

A 2-Day Garage Transformation: Making Space for a Workout Area

In this garage transformation, we focused on creating a dedicated workout space and micro-organizing categories, including home improvement, holiday decorations, and party supplies.

Again the client didn’t expect us to paint the garage, but I love going above and beyond. With leftover paint from a previous project, we were able to clean up the walls in this garage too, just enough to make a significant difference.

Filing cabinets come in handy again and this time for cleaning up all those toys and having nice spot for incoming mail.

The nice thing about this garage was that it already had huge built in shelves and they had bought storage cabinets that just needed to be rearranged. We moved the farthest right hand cabinets over to the fridge area because we wanted it to house extra kitchen supplies. Keeping that category together made a huge difference.

The tool/home-improvement area needed a lot of space for micro-categories. The micro-categories we focused on were rental, hardware, paint, plumbing, and electrical. We further micro-organized those categories once we were done with all the macro work.

Tip: Any micro-organization you think you might like, save until the very end. Trust me.

I love how the workout area opened up once we moved the refrigerator over and removed the hook system. Then we could put the stationary bike in the corner.

We then clearly labeled every tub so items are easy to spot.

Everything came together and felt much more open and airy in the end.

1 Day Tool Shed Transformation

This tool shed underwent a quick and effective transformation with the addition of two small filing cabinets (which are just out of camera view), a reorganization of tubs, and a rearrangement of the workbench and shelving system.

The main issue was that tools were scattered in two locations: a pegboard behind the tubs and shelving, and the workbench area. Having tools in multiple places made it challenging to keep things organized. To solve this, we moved the workbench to the pegboard area, consolidating all the tools into one efficient workspace.