The Garage Reorganized. Again.

Yes.  Again.

I know, right?!  How many times can one poor soul arrange and rearrange and organize and reorganize one darn garage?!

Apparently many.

This time though I attempted to get ahead of myself and the eternally impending mess.  This time, yes, I did a wee spot o' pre-planning.  Not a lot, mind you, but enough to keep the garage tidy and organized for a lengthier period of time.

Or so I hope.

Gosh I really hope so.  I must admit, I am quite tired of cleaning up the garage.

How did this bout rile its fun head?  Well, ya know, my Golf is girthier than my sweet little Rabbit was, plus the whole shebang was out of hand again.

What a freakin' mess, yeesch.

And then Mike got a new car.  I know, it's an awful lot of new car ridiculousness going on.  It's kind of obscene, yes.

And over on Mike's side too.  

But he got a truck, see, an SUV which is, well, a size enhancement from his previous four wheeled machine so it required roomier digs.  Which meant suddenly the lawnmower was henceforth parked over on my side.  Uhhhh, nuh uh.

It's tricky ya know.  Larger scale thought....We have a gangway on either side of the garage, hence the garage, when it was built, could only be of a specific size which obviously limits its interior dimensions.  And as we're all quite clear on now, there weren't ain't no way the flipper was gonna spend half a penny more to ya know, make any true and real improvements.

Still I think his smartest move was hiring out the garage build to a company.  Maybe not the best company who does the most quality work but better work than his mopes provided.

Anywhooooo.....

Soooo, toss all three car car mess confluences into a blender = Becky cleaning up the garage ah-gain.

After a brief discussion, Mike and I agreed to let go of cabinet units my parents gave us to free up needed square footage.

And after a fifteen second scan of the garage (aka my pre-planning, ahem), off to Menards I was for supplies.

Granted, I did do a tad of interweb researching prior, a virtual garage interloper if you will, to scope out options and/or ideas.

But, so, the goal this time was to not only make the garage more organized, useful, and efficient, but also allow for growth, wiggle room for expansion.  As one's garage tends to do.  Or such as ours tends to do.

What did I pick up at the second home?

• one 4'x4' sheet of pegboard 
• accompanying pegboard hooky things*
• five 1 x 12 x 8' pine boards
• two pre-made cheap-o shelves
• brackets for said shelves
• two jumbo storage hangars*

Is that it?  Yeah, I think that's it.

I should mention I've never been a pegboard fan.  Not sure why or what my aversion is, I uh, just uh, eh, nope.  Maybe it's due to seeing many a poorly aged pegboards all beat up and dingy and sad.  Or that everything is out in the open and I can't stand that.  Dunno.  Not a fan.

But I bought it anyway.

Hey, we're all weird, right?  Right.

Right, so, ok.  To start I dove at the cabinet units, emptying them out completely, seeing what could be tossed, what's a keeper.

How do we amass so much crap?  That fur ball is a definite keeper.

In the end, there wasn't necessarily a whole heck of a lot of stuff in them and after eons and years of desiring drawers for the kitchen and acknowledging a few drawers in the garage are helpful, I opted to keep the drawer unit.

Which is fine, it's smaller and yeah, drawers are gooood.

After seeing what I was left with post-purge, it was time to roll on my organizing solutions.

Up went the pegboard and accompanying pegboard hooks, right underneath those diagonal 2x's I had installed previously.  As many hand tools, garden tools, and whoo-ha that I could hang there, I did.  I even, heh, brought a few tools up from the basement that will prove proximity handy.

Zip zip, a few screws through the holes and this organizing bugger was up.

Three sentences.  Heh, it took me the better part of an hour to get that wrapped up, maybe more, who knows why, and yet it's so easily summarized in mere seconds, three sentences.  Heh!

Next I ripped out the way way spiffy cross line laser level the nice DeWalt folks sent me to test out.  I  have never tried one of these, not even a regular single one or nothin'.  (They didn't pay me for this, just sent the nifty gadget, fyi.)

Fascinating tool really.  This one, the DW088CG (it's not on Amazon but here* are similar ones) has green laser lines, a horizontal and a vertical.  You can flip one on or both or none although none is well, dark and useless.  The lines are nice and bright and crisp, extending a healthy distance too.

It's self-leveling; the little laser gizmo bobbles around inside so if you bump it, the lines disappear for a second or two but they always come back and come back level regardless of what surface it's standing on or attached to.

Which is cool, one less thing to be concerned about.  Woulda made my life so simple during the pantry shelf installation!

There's a spot to screw in a tripod and while I don't have a schwanky tool-specific one, I do have a camera tripod* and that worked out just fine.  There are also super heavy duty magnets on a swiveled mount so it'll stick to metal studs or whatever other magnetic surface you've got.

But it's cool.  Simple but does the job.

What did I use it for?  A couple things.

Using a long leftover piece of pallet wood from my blinds making days I corralled our gazillions of tiki torches.  The level was perfectly helpful in saving Mike from an OCD moment.

Nice crisp clear level(!) line!

By the way, if you cross in front of the laser, then you can't see the line, so uh yeah, don't cross in front.

And bingo, task completed super easily.  Yay!

The key here, rather than measuring from a possibly not-level floor to various points across, is this tool saved oodles and oodles of time.  Almost dumbfounding amount of oodles, actually.  The point of a tool is to make life simpler, right?  This definitely does that.

Dogs are not level.

I also used it to install a wee bitty shelf for the speaker Mike uses outdoors.*  It's not an outdoor speaker per se, hence garage storage, but the wires and the chaos were making me batty, so up it all went on a tidy shelf out of the way.  Yay!

The bottom of the brackets are not only aligned but they're level.  How can you beat that simplicity?

Balancing on the most-definitely-not-level-mini-fridge on top of a tripod....yet still level!  Down right cool.

Yay, speaker shelf!  And everything is uncluttered.  Thumbs up.

Ok, so next was shuffling items around and veering down the path of putting everything away.  Beginning with lowering all the hooks on my side so the broom, rake, blah blah whatever else became human (read: my) height reachable.

Part of the path to everything-in-its-spot entailed those 1x12's.

Tellin' ya, those DeWalt ToughSystem tool boxes* are way handy.  Especially when you accidentally spill an entire box of screws, just so happens luckily inside the box.  

First I clipped one of the 1x12 boards into footlong pieces, so mmm hm, a total of eight.

Next. two pieces went on each end of a second board and two pieces were evenly spaced across the remaining length.  Yes, math.  I surely goofed too.  Lastly, a third board to cap it off.

Ah, super handy folding workbench in the garage!  So good.

Very good, a multi-purpose shelf; not only storage within but storage atop and future under with hooks maybe, plus it's sturdier than eventually-droopy plank shelves going across.  Sweet!

Heh, next was getting one up on the wall and attached all by my lonesome.  Holy swear words.  I am not going to heaven, my friends.

I used leftover chunks of 2x2 or 2x4 attached to the studs of the garage as hangars.  With a lot of hoisting and fumbling and grunting and maneuvering and juggling, oooh my goodness it was not fun, scrambling with two screw guns, oh dear.  Somehow, and I quite surely don't know how, one went up.

I screwed in three of these hard to see pieces total across the length of where the shelf would end up.

At one point Finn poked his head into the garage, "what the F Mommy, I'm trying to relax out here.  Why so many bad bad bad words?  My giant bat ears are burning!"  I need to get him earmuffs. (hahahahahahahahaha, people make them!!*)

Mike said to me later, "ya know, I can help you n' stuff."  But that woulda meant waiting for his next availability and yeah, no, nope.  He was out of town that weekend.  Maybe next time, babe, thank you, mwah!

I thought I was going to perish getting this on the wall.  Poof, explode then evaporate.

Dubious in fabricating another of these box shelf things due to the hassle of trying to hang the first one, I went for it anyway with stoic determination to force the second easier into hanging.

And while it was slightly easier to hang because I used longer stick lumber to hang off of and the second shelf was lower than the first, there was still a steady stream of struggle and swear words.  Especially because I dropped this second one straight to the concrete and it became kitty-whomps.

But once it was sturdy, things were golden.  I was too wiped for a butt wiggle dance though.

Items went up into the rafters.  A shelf over the window on my side to "match" Mike's.  Items went into the drawers.  Into the boxes of the shelves or on top of the assemblages.

I know, I know, I can't part with those black metal chairs.  Sigh.  I love them.  Love.

A plastic shelf unit broken down, no longer needed.  Like items collected (who knew we had four spools of weed eater line?!), crap stashed, hidden, tucked up and away.

A big sweep of the floor, a nice big celebratory roll of the lawnmower back over to Mike's side, a sneeze or two, and ta-da!  Cleaned up and reorganized garage without spending a fortune on all that overly fancy garage gizmo la-de-da sold in stores.

We have yet to use that pallet wood table, hmph.

All told this project took me ten hours.  I know.  Yes, ten hours.  I kid you not.  I spent eight full and strong one day knowing how hot the next day was forecasted then two the next to wrap things up.

Oh yeah.  So organized.  And the lawnmower, heh, back on Mike's side.

How much did I spend?  Yeah, I'm wondering....hang on, lemme dig out that receipt..........Eighty five bucks.

Almost block party time, time for those spiffy bag boards.

And I didn't even use the jumbo hooks nor one of the shelves.  So I have those left waiting in the wings.  Or I could return them.  Huh.

Nice.

Mike uttered gleefully, "hey babe, I like this, I can find things instantly!," as he pulled out weed eater line and a snipper the other day.  Ah ha!  Sweet, right?  I thought so.

Looks messy but it's soooooo much tidier and more organized.

Even nicer?  And I'm tellin' ya, this is the best part, made it all worthwhile:  he put everything back where it came from.  **boooof**  Mind. A-blown.

Yay!!

This better the heck last a long damn time.  Heh.

Oh hey, before I head out, it's voting season my friends (voting is now closed).  What?  Yes!  Just three quick votes, a few shares would be super stellar, and I'll be so thankful!

Amara Interior Blog Awards:  Best DIY & Home Blog.  Yay!  There are some monstrously heavy hitters in that category, one in the neighborhood next door even; some a' these get the amount of visitors in a day that I've had in three years total so it's a long shot but I'd love your one-time-per-email-address vote!

Over on Instructables, vote lovin' for our faux rust and wood shelf and also our DIY first floor bathroom vanity would be fantastic.

And share! Sharing is caring.  Heh.

You guys are awesome, thank you!

And happy nine year wedding anniversary, Mike!  I know, right?!  Nine years!  Where'd that go?  Hailey should have turned fifteen over the weekend.  But a big super huge happy birthday shout out to my dad -- Happy happy birthday and many many more!

*The pegboard hooky things, jumbo storage hangars, cross line lasers, camera tripods, Bose SoundDock speaker (though it doesn't appear to be available anymore), DeWalt ToughSystem, and dog earmuffs are Amazon affiliate links.  Mwah, thanks!  Please see the "boring stuff" tab for more info.
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