Store More, Search Less
For many families, the garage is not only the place where the car
occasionally gets parked. It's the place where everything from tools to
toys gets thrown, often just to get them out of the house. And then
there's the workshop, which was supposed to be your husband's "fix-it"
shop but eventually became buried in masses of piled castaways from
every other room in your home.
Alas, both the garage and the workshop in many homes have become
completely and utterly disorganized. Here are some ideas for solving the
problem:
Use baby food jars. No, you don't have to have
babies in your house. You can actually purchase empty jars at almost any
home center. These compact containers are ideal for storing nails,
screws, hooks, nuts, bolts and other small fasteners. To make things
even more organized and easier to find, use a DYMO® electronic labeler
to create self-stick labels that identify what's in the jars.
Store paperwork in binders. In the workshop,
instruction manuals for power tools can be 3-hole punched and put into
ring binders for referencing whenever needed. Or, use sheet
protectors...just put the instructions into the sheet protectors (which
are pre-punched for use with 3-ring binders) and place into binders.
Here's another suggestion you probably never considered: store sandpaper
in binders! Simply punch holes in the sandpaper and insert into a ring
binder.
Put up pegboards. They've been around forever and
that's because they work! You can purchase a pegboard (which has holes
already in it and allows for hanging various items on hooks placed into
the holes) at any hardware store. Hammers, pliers and wrenches can be
hung for easy finding of these handy tools whenever you need them. In
addition to pegboards for handtools, use the walls in your garage to
hang up shovels, garden implements and other larger tools as well as
bicycles keeping them off the floor where they can be tripped upon.
Identify cans of paint. Did you just finish a
painting project but didn't use all the paint? Keep it for another
project. Before storing, put some paint from the inside of the can on
the top lid. Youll always know what color the paint is without having to
remove the lid.
Utilize old cabinetry. Have you recently replaced
those old cabinets in your kitchen, or are you putting a new medicine
cabinet in your bathroom? Don't throw away the old cabinets, instead,
put them on the wall in your garage or workshop. They'll provide a
perfect, quick-find place for storing cans of automotive fluid, repair
manuals, garden nozzles, hoses, work gloves, and many other things.
