How to Clean Your Garage and the Tools Inside It

Depending on your habits, cleaning your garage could feel like a piece of cake or it could feel like an exercise in futility — either way, it’s got to be done.

(Especially if the condition of your garage could earn you a guest appearance on Hoarders.)

An unkempt and inappropriately used garage is a horrible place to store your tools; especially important yard maintenance tools.

That’s why in this post, we’re going to focus on some handy tips you can use to get your garage clean, and create a safe accessible space for your tools all year long.

Remove as Much as Possible

As a general rule of thumb, you should be getting rid of anything that’s been sitting in your garage for one year or more, and has not been touched or thought about.

When it comes to emotionally meaningful items, store them in small containers and place them on shelves in the attic or a small corner of the garage.

For all other items that you do not use or consider special to you — get rid of them!

You can either recycle these items, throw them in the trash, or sell them online or at a garage sale. The point is, you don’t want to hold onto things that you don’t use — because then you end up losing valuable space to store items that you DO use.

Go for a Round 2!

Once you’ve gone through your garage, and gotten rid of anything and everything that is no longer useful to you (and rehomed anything that was still meaningful), take inventory of everything left.

If everything remaining is still taking up a lot of space in your garage, meaning there isn’t room to park a car in it, you still have too much.

Step back and seriously consider what is causing you to horde so many unnecessary items. Then do whatever it takes to get that stuff out of there. None of it will enrich your life if you haven’t used any of it in over a year.

What will enrich your life is having a safe, clean and accessible place to reach your tools.

Set Up a Pegboard

One of the worst, yet most often observed way of storing tools (especially yard tools) is to throw them all in a crate, bucket or drawer. This is an absolutely great way to find your tools wearing out sooner, and not where you thought you put them last when you really need them most.

Instead of following the norm, go ahead and get yourself some pegboard. The hardware store carries pegboard and this isn’t something that is expensive by any means.

With this small investment, you’ll definitely get your value back after the first few months of seeing your tools clean, safe, organized, and ready at the moment you need them.

Install the pegboard up on the wall. Then take inventory of your largest tools down to your smallest tools.

Start down at the bottom of the pegboard, and install pegs to hold your largest yard tools first. Working with the next largest yard tool, laying out enough pegs to support that tool. Work your way up the pegboard until your last and smallest tool is on the board.

After your done admiring your own handiwork, make a commitment to yourself that whenever you’re done using one of your yard tools, it will be cleaned and placed back into its place on to the peg board.

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Following these tips (and this blog!), will help you get the most out of both your garage space and your yard tools year after year.

However, if you need certain aspects of your property maintained by a pro, then we’ll be ready for your call!