The Garage... oh boy! These projects are always messy, but add a year of neglect due to a certain Pandemic and you've got yourself a busy weekend on your hands!
Our garage is connected to our home and, as with most of our closet spaces, we also treated the garage as a space to "hide" our mess and to deal with it later... This last weekend we went through our garage and not only cleaned it out, but put in place a system to keep it tidy.
Most of us don't use the garage, the way we do in other areas of our homes. There is no "living" done in a garage, it is typically used as a storage space. Let's drive right in and maybe I can spark some passion in you to tackle your garage as apart of your "Spring Cleaning" to-do list!
Purging:
It was the most time consuming part of this project. We went through everything in the garage to determine whether it was trash, recyclable or donations.
The donations piled up pretty quick, we had some old dining plates and glasses that we'd been storing in the garage and then added our clothing, shoe and gadget donations to the pile.
After carting those off to Goodwill, we started with picking up trash. Loose/old receipts, plastic baggies, straw wrappers, paper napkins etc. And then bigger things like, broken fans and old window blinds.
We also moved quite a bit of stuff back into our home. Things like crafting supplies, things for Chris' hobby, a musical instrument, and speaker.
Shop-Vac:
If you've never heard of one, a shop-vac is a large vacuum that works like a normal vacuum would, with suction and a dust/dirt filter. It also works great with suctioning out the bottom of your blow-up pools and/or collecting unwanted water from your basement or other areas where water is not welcome.
I LOVE using ours to keep our garage clean. Dirt, snow, rocks, leaves and so much more is tracked into our garage, and this beauty makes clean up simple and easy!
Once our purging was finished, I went through and sucked up all the dirt, and then after using a homemade floor cleaner (I'll share more on that in a bit) I sucked up the excess water for a spick and span garage floor.
Categories/Sections:
Next up, categories! If you've been on my blog before, you know I love a good system, and creating "homes" or sections for our items to live in, has made and kept my home tidy over the last few months, so why not apply that here?!
So we started by moving some things around, so that every section could function well and stay neat. We moved the tool shelving unit over towards the tool bench, which freed up space to place the grill, beer cooler and our brand new deep freeze onto one wall.
The last portion to categorize was our built-in shelving unit. We have a Winter section: outdoor Christmas lights and accessories, Summer section: bug spray, pool cleaner, Gardening section, House Painting section, and a Camping section.
Maintenance:
The last thing I did was cleaning our garage floor. Above I mentioned the glorious shop-vac, but there is an at home garage floor solution that you can whip up very easily!
1 gallon of warm water + 1/2 cup baking soda.
Mix those together and "mop" your floors with a nylon bristled brush/broom. There are other solutions you can make to take care of rust or oil stains, also using ingredients you already have!
I never knew you could clean your garage floors like that, and it is definitely something that will be on my tasks list during these warmer months ahead.
Thanks so much for joining me as we cleaned up our garage. I have loved the results and am reveling in the fact that we can walk around both our cars while in the garage!
I hope this has inspired you to do some of your own garage cleaning . A clean home is a happy home and it feels great when the hard work is finished.
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