Is your home an excellent example of minimalist principles? Have you ditched the clutter, opened up the space and made your home much more beautiful and relaxing as a result? Is your garage overflowing with that clutter you successfully ditched from the rest of your home? It might be time to do your minimalist thing and have a minimalist garage too!
For a lot of people, even those who consider themselves minimalists, the garage is nothing more than a glorified junk drawer with no practical purpose whatsoever. They can’t even park their cars in there! This is such a waste of space that could otherwise be used to enhance their lives.
If you’re guilty of having too much junk in the garage, here are some tips to help you sort it out and create a minimalist garage.
Hire a Waste Container
If your garage is full of junk, then the first thing you should do is hire a sizeable waste container because there’s little point getting to grips with your junk if you have nowhere to put it when you’re done.
As well as hiring a waste container, you should also think about looking into local storage facilities. So, if you should come across any items, like sentimental keepsakes, that you don’t want to part with. But which would only be taking up space in the garage, you can store it safely away until you’re in a better place to deal with it.
It would also be a good idea to have a number of boxes on hand for stuff you’re willing to part with, which is good enough to be donated to local shelters, Goodwill, Oxfam, and others. Donating is a great motivator to get rid of things without the reluctance.
Use the Three Pile System
Now you have somewhere to put the junk you sort, it’s time to use the three pile method. Sort the contents of your garage into keep, donate and trash piles. When you’re doing this, you need to be pretty brutal. Keep only the things that you really need or which really do make your life better.
If you don’t need them, but you want them for whatever reason, other send them to your storage unit to give you more thinking time, or even better, send them straight to your donate boxes. It might be hard, but knowing they’ll benefit someone less fortunate should soften the blow some.
Create Zones
Once you’ve determined what will stay and what will go, it’s time to create zones for the things you’re keeping. Ideally, these zones should be on the edges of the garage and should be used to store like with like. So, you should have one area for tools, another for furniture, a corner for camping equipment, etc.
You should use storage bins, boxes and shelves to organise this stuff and leave the bulk of the space free for storing your cars. Working on hobbies or whatever else it is you want to use your garage for.
One In, One Out
To ensure that your garage stays as free of clutter as possible in the future, implement the one in, one out rule. So you get rid of a piece of clutter for every new item you bring in.
Your garage deserves to be more than a junk drawer. Follow the simple steps above to restore the space and make it really useful once again!
Do you have a minimalist garage?
