Organization Inspiration: the Garage

Now that Jady, the dog and I have settled back into life in a house, sometimes I forget that we lived for so many years in an apartment. There have been some great benefits to having more space, for sure-- more than one bathroom, a bedroom just for guests-- and I'm still enjoying the luxury of just opening the back door and letting the dog outside. Hey, it's the little things:)

But how is it that after years of paring down our stuff and keeping things (fairly) simple and organized, I already feel like this house is bursting at the seams?  Between the mountains of things we kept in storage at home while we were in Europe (apparently we were hoarders-- seriously, we kept everything!), some additions from our time abroad, and then the normal, daily accumulation of life, sometimes I feel like one of those fish that just keeps growing according to the size pond it lives in.

Slowly and surely I have been tackling the organizational challenges of closets I crammed random boxes into when we first moved in and were working on the house (how long exactly can I claim that we "just moved in"??), and we've been making some satisfying progress.  One area that needs some serious organization still is our garage, which has functioned as a storage unit, lawn care center, power tool workshop, and workout room (that last one's more hypothetical).

Here's the garage at the height of its messy glory:

When I step back and really take in what we've got in there, it's actually not that bad.  The problem is that we have no storage, no shelves or cabinets to help separate the paint cans and power tools from the extra furniture and the treadmill.  For now, I'm dreaming of a garage like one of these:

Good Housekeeping

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Hey, a girl can dream, right?

xo

Liza