A garage decrapification reveal.

First of all, I forgot to mention I hit 200 posts on Monday! Hooty hoo!

Anyway, this isn't the prettiest of my projects, and I know I've hyped it up just a smidge. It's really not that fantabulous, but it has made a HUGE difference in our lives. The stress level when we walk or drive into garage has decreased significantly.

Let's start with the most fun area -- the spot where we both had to do some gymnastics to get around every day:

Let's discuss, shall we? Brand new faux tree from Goodwill, purchased nine months ago? Check. Dirty cups from the car? Check. Pretty white Target basket from Goodwill getting grossified? Check. Neck pillow from my last flight eight months ago? Check.

Niiiice.

This is it now:

What was hidden in the picture above was a massive cardboard box we use for paper recycling. I thought it would be brilliant to save it for this purpose, until the first time I tried to get it in the car to take to the recycling place. Ummmm...it was at least 50 pounds, I'm not even kidding. So now, we've downsized to a cheap trash can. I leave this here so before I walk in the house, (most of the time,) I can open everything, shred and toss paper right in. Once a week I take it to the bin. Awesome.

The storage bin was from the deck -- I was going to take it to Goodwill, but then I realized how dumb that would be when it would be perfect for the garage. It holds all the outdoor furniture covers, all of our gardening gloves (I believe I found 12 pairs, um kay...) and a few other garden jobbies.

The ladder used to be around the corner, but I realized I use it all. the. time. So why not have it right by the door, so I can grab it easily? The little frame with hooks holding the garden tools was a gift I painted black and it's perfect! The $2.99 metal vase was a Goodwill find and holds umbrellas and wet vac tools. (OH yes, I spray painted it.)

Ahhhh...loverly...

We used to have all three of our garbage bins over to the right in the corner, but they were such a pain to get to, and it made it a bit tight for hubby's SUV. I moved the bins, moved the shelves down a bit, and added shelves we had in another spot, so everything we could possibly need is in ONE spot:

The shelves hold lawn stuff/bug stuff/bird seed/barbecue stuff, the list is endless. I made each shelf a "category." I think I may even label them so hubby keeps this organized. If he doesn't, he's goin' down...

I used dollar store bins to group all the small stuff:

Would you like to know how many bug spray products I found? Lessee...approximately eight? Yes, I think that's right. Do I need to mention we never use bug spray, like, EVER?

I kind of hate that this still looks like a mess, even though it's not. It will have to do until we can spring for some fancy schmacy cabinets:

This little dude is awesome, and I highly recommend it. It was in another corner we couldn't even get to, and now it's so easy to access. It holds all of the tools with a handle:

Oh, and hubby kept buying fertilizer when we had bags and bags we didn't know about. So now we have about four to use up. Told you you waste money when you aren't organized! We sure did.

To the right of this area used to look like this:

And now it's this:
We had the hooks in the wall for our huge long ladder, but our friends use it at their house more than we do, so they keep it. Kind of a please-adopt-it-it's-so-huge-you-can-keep-it kind of deal. So I just put a few more hooks up and hung everything I possibly could to get it out of the way. We moved the lawn mower over to this spot so hubs can get it out without pulling out the car. This is AWESOME.

The next part is to the left of the now black door (see previous post):

You could seriously not walk in here -- it was disgusting that we had about 120 square feet of space that was basically unusable. Nuts! (See my sewing table? Looks much better inside.)

Now it looks like this:

I moved the peg board from another spot, spray painted it for fun, and rearranged everything to work better. Otherwise, it was just a serious example of decrapification.

Oh no, you sillies. This is a fraction of my tools. Most of them are in the basement -- that's coming soon. :)

Just to the left of this area used to look like this:

THAT is what I opened my car door into every. single. day. THAT is why I have scratches all over my car door. You know I love my molding people. I keep all my scraps just in case. The just in case scenario was a little out of control, so I got rid of about half of it, moved the peg board, and now it looks like this:

Much easier access to the trash, which is very important you know. Removing the pegboard made a huge difference:

Ahhh yes, I can breathe. It is lovely, isn't it?

I also did a good cleaning of everything -- used the wet vac to get up in the corners to get all the webs. (Grody.) Look at these corners!:GORG!

I spent very little money -- $20 on a ball holder and less than five on a few more of these hooks:

They are great and work for almost anything. They are only $1.47 each. I spent about ten bucks on trash bins for my molding and the recycled paper. All told, to completely redo the garage and organize it, I spent less than $40. Serious. I used what we had and moved it around to work better.

The first day I spent about three hours on it and got it looking really, really good. I just stuck with it and didn't stop. All together, including painting the door and steps, I spent about six or seven hours in here total.

Take the kids to grandmas, to a friend's or now you can do it when they are at school -- and knock it out in a day! If you have two people working you could get it down in half the time! I can't even tell you how relaxing it is to drive in now:

There are a few things we'd still like to do -- finish the floors for one. We are trying to determine if it's worthwhile to insulate and drywall the exterior walls. Does anyone know about this? Does it help with the heating and cooling of the rest of the house? And I would love to paint at least the door wall (Aimee!) but the ceilings are 12 feet up in here and that will be a huge job. It will take primer and paint and I have about a mile long list ahead of that one. ;)

I filled all three of our large garbage bins with CRAP during this process, plus more. It felt sooooo good people. This was all spurred on by our deck redo, so now we'll have space to put most of the outdoor furniture in the winter, which makes us feel better about that investment.

Go for it this weekend, you won't regret it!!