All garage organization is animated by the principles of retrieval, not of storage.  Storage is easy.  Remembering where you put something –or finding what you want — well, that’s hard.  So, if you put all your “electrical stuff” in a single garage cabinet, that is a form of “garage organization.” Either you will remember that all electrical items are there. Or you will see it fairly quickly when you start searching. You might even label the cabinet itself.

Garage cabinets assist in organizing your garage two ways:  first by getting the items stored away, out of sight and second, by putting similar stuff in the same space, be it a garage cabinet, a drawer or a shelf inside a garage cabinet.

Generally speaking, garage cabinets come in four flavors:  garage cabinets that mount to the wall, often at eye level; half cabinets that fit on the floor and come up to your waist; workbenches that have drawers or shelves below the main workbench surface; and full garage cabinets that stand on the floor and extend to 6, 7 or 8 feet tall. Of course, there are also overhead garage storage solutions, but “cabinets” are simply those enclosed storage containers that are on the floor or attached to the wall.

The best way to plan your garage organization is to assemble your “stuff” into the logical categories you’d  use to find it. In my case, that’s “fasteners” (nails, screws, bolts, glue and bailing wire!), “sports” equipment, “off season”, “painting” supplies, “drills/saws”, “electrical, TV and computer” (primarily cables, antennae, converter plugs and those teeny screwdrivers used on computers), “Christmas” stuff and so on.  Some items fit nicely into a whole cabinet.  Others only need a drawer.  One shelf might be assigned to “drills”.   A whole floor-to-ceiling cabinet might hold “sports equipment.”

Often, a cabinet is too big to properly organize all the items within it — hence the need for drawers, shelves, cubbies, hangers, etc. Once you have the main organizing done — say, “electrical, TV and computer” — how you sub-divide the space inside the cabinet is driven by what you are storing. In my case, a drawer for each one: electrical” holds octopus plugs, three-prong to two-prong converters, electrical tape, soldering stuff, extension cords, and so on. The computer drawer has some extra mice, some printer cables, and the detrius of earlier computers I’m saving for some unknown future need!

The measure of success is whether you can tell a visitor where something is and they can find it without you. And you get extra credit if they can find it without you telling them where it is. Hopefully, they can simply SEE from the gross organization that an extension cord won’t be in the paint locker but might be in the cabinet with a bunch of TV and computer stuff. That’s the acid test for great organization.

A “garage organizer” is any device that contains and subdivides space so that stored items have a logic or a visibilty aiding retrieval.  A rolling mechanics tool chest is a “garage organizer” to the extent it keeps wrenches and other tools organized in a way let’s your FIND what you need.

Chest serving as a garage organizer

Remember: Storage is only half the problem. Knowing where something is and being able to EASILY find it is the real success.   Garage organizers exploit the fact that having a specific place to store a logical grouping —  e.g., all your nails, nuts, bolts, washers, screws, clips, grommets and other “fasteners” — will help you find that 1-1/4 inch wood screw you need.   Likely, the garage organizer you select for your “fasteners” (or any other logical category of things)  would quickly display everything — so you  see all the different sizes and can quickly find what you want.   This can be done with an organizer chest, like that shown here.  Or it can be an insert in a drawer – something like the organizer you use in the silverware drawer in your kitchen.

Freestanding, garage organizer

My favorite garage organizer is this wonderful standalone tower by S. Kuramata comprising a rod which serves as a hub for a stack of rotating shelves.  It’s beautiful.  It’s elegant.  And it will give you lots of ideas about how to think about “garage organizers.”  They don’t need to be boring, that’s for sure!

The most popular types of garage organizers are those which hang items on the wall.  The old-fashioned pegboard system  was a very popular way to hang up tools – easily seen, fetched, used and replaced.  But as power tools proliferated and as single tools became sets (e.g., of wrenches or Torx bits), storage of these items on pegboard became more problematic.  Have you ever seen a Skil saw hanging on a pegboard?

Popular "rail" systems serve as garage organizers

Some wall-mounted systems – sometimes called rail systems – are meant to carry heavier, bulkier items.  Special hooks can even carry bicycles and cantilevered boxes or shelves that support heavier loads.

Cubbies, especially those that can be adjusted, create nooks which can hold medium sized items, be they sporting equipment, tools, paint supplies, woodworking materials or whatever.  Cubbies are like a constellation of open-faced (doorless), small, compact, garage cabinets where “everything has its place and everything is in place.”

Cubbys serve as garage organizers

The last popular non-cabinet garage storage solution is simple:  Shelving.   Shelving is just cubbies without the vertical dividers!

Standlone bookshelf-type shelves are popular, and  the shelving that attaches to walls offer great space to store and then see the items stored.

An old fashioned manual winch can open up lots of overhead garage storage

In the garage, a winch is used for lifting something heavy — the classic case being lifting an engine out of a car.  But our interest is more in how you can use it for creating garage storage — specifically, overhead garage storage.    Sure, if you have a garage winch, you can use it for anything, but a cheap winch, especially a hand crank one like that show here, is often all you need.  Just imagine this winch anchored near a side wall with an attached cable that goes up the side wall to a strong pulley where the wall meets the ceiling (or roof), which then goes over to a pulley or two in the center of the garage, and then down to a basket or platform that is raised or lowered.

Lower the platform or basket, put items to be stored on / in it, and then use the winch to lift the platform or basket out of the way.  This works especially well with open ceilings.  This is a great solution if all your garage cabinets and other garage storage places are full.

This electric winch is probably overkill for most garages

Sure, you can buy an electric winch and save yourself a little cranking.  But that adds cost and complexity.   If all you are doing is adding some garage storage solutions to your garage, you don’t really need to set up an electric winch.   It definitely would be more hoisting power than the typical overhead storage solution would need, that’s for sure.

A garage winch powered by your existing drill might be a solution

If for some reason you don’t want to deal with a hand crank, but you want to avoid the expense of a permanent, electrical winch, consider a hybrid system, like the garage winch provided by Pulley-Man(tm),  pictured here.   This device has the anchoring hooks, coupled with some steel cable running through a geared-down pulley that can be powered by a conventional 1/4 inch power drill — you know, a Black and Decker or other drill found in almost every workshop in the USA.   When you need to raise or lower the overhead storage, you just get your drill and voila! you have a powered garage winch for the time that you need it.

So, fear not.  That overhead space is ripe for the storing.   And if you don’t want to deal with ladders, then have the storage space come down to you on a pulley and cable system, then hoisted back up using your new garage winch!.

Kuramata's Homage To Piet Mondrian

Kuramata created two cabinets (for the Cappellini collection) paying homage to the 20th century artist Piet Mondrian. The rectangular, geometric shapes are perfect for a garage cabinet door. And the colors can complement most any garage.

But why stop with that idea? How about a Jackson Pollock? After all, your paint splatters could be repurposed to high art! Or buy some poster of a Van Gogh or a Rembrandt … or anyone really … and adhere it to the garage cabinet door with some shellac (for wooden cabinets) or clear lacquer (for metal ones). See also Should Garage Cabinets Be Wood, Metal, Plastic or Other? Should Mona Lisa be on your paint locker?

Don’t forget that there are multiple cabinets to take care of. Let’s say you have two doors on workbench cabinets that are on the floor and two that are wall-mounted, just above the workbench. What four pictures might work together to form a coherent whole? Aces of spades, hearts, clubs and diamonds? The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse? Or maybe something whimsical, like a four quadrants of compass rose, showing NE, NW, SE and SW respectively.

When you consider planning out your entire garage cabinet system, don’t forget to add a touch of color this way, or a unique, personal touch.

Here’s a very short video that shows one rail and a couple brackets:

The most popular rail systems are made by Rubbermaid™ and FreedomRail.™   The Rubbermaid FastTrack system  (which is shown in the video) installs horizontally and claims a 2000 pound carrying capacity.

By staggering the rails, you can make room for long items like rakes or shovels and shorter items like baskets or boxes (which can fit on a shelf).

The main benefit of garage rail storage solutions, other than flexibility, is keeping everything off the floor. By keeping the floor completely free, the garage is easier to keep clean, pests are not invited to make nests and the items you are seeking are closer to eye level.  And because there’s a “system,” there is a wide range of storage components – from open mesh or solid shelves; to boxes or cubbies; to S-hooks or dual prongs; to multi-drawer units; or to complete 2-door or 4-drawer cabinets.    And the systems can support organizers of varying depths – 9”, 12” or even 16” depths, as well as those that hang on the wall.

Another approach to a rail system is to mount the rails vertically, as is shown just below. There, the rails are attached vertically, several times to the same stud, and the rails have reinforced holes where shelving, garage cabinets, storage baskets, brackets or other garage storage solutions can be attached.

Garage Cabinets On Vertical Rails

Most people think of rail systems as a sort of heavy-duty pegboard – something that will support garden tools, bikes and stuff on a shelf.  But they also can hold a more conventional garage cabinet, with or without doors or drawers. Even a sort of bookshelf can hang on a rail, either a rail mounted horizontally or two rails mounted vertically.   We have even seen a “worktop” cantilevered off one of the vertical systems — although we wouldn’t want to load it as heavily as a traditional workbench.   (Also, at 16 inches in depth, it isn’t as useful as a full workbench.)   But rest assured: If you want a tall cabinet, bookshelves or other traditional garage cabinets, they all are available on rail systems.

These solutions are better than Ikea garage cabinets or Craftsman steel garage cabinets.   But you can get hardware that can attache to the back of these and regular, plywood garage cabinets and then attach to the rails.  Very cool!

The systems can be a bit expensive if you have a huge space to cover, but for modest installations, or for filling in just a portion of your garage, these “rail” oriented garage cabinet storage solutions are great.

You see, there are devices that thieves can easily buy called “code grabbers.”  When you leave your garage and press the remote, it sends an unencrypted signal to the motor that runs your garage door opener.  (That motor is best kept free of any garage overhead storage, by the way.)  Then the door shuts.  All’s well.  But if the thief has a code grabber, his “black box” had just made a copy of your code.  After you are gone, the thief presses the button on the black box, pulls into your garage, shuts the door and robs your house at leisure!

Here are some tips:

*  First, be alert.  Look for any unusual cars parked in the vicinity, especially if someone is sitting in them.    (If so, use the keypad, not the remote control and note the license number in case one of your neighbors gets robbed.)

* Second, get in the habit of locking the door to your house.  It’s not a big bother — you do it when leaving your front door.  You have your keys in your hand anyway.

* Third, consider getting further countermeasure s — encryption or a remote with randomly rotating opening codes.  We also recommend that you lock the door between your garage and the house, just like you would your front door.

* If you plan to be away from an extensive period of time, unplug the motor that opens the door.

* Make sure your installer hasn’t left the factory (default) settings on.   Just open the unit and set a random number for the starting codes.   It’s good to do this when moving into a new house or apartment, too.

All of these ideas apply when you are coming home, too — not just when you leave.    Thieves are less likely to want to break in with you home, but rapists aren’t.

Another risk is losing the remote — or leaving it in your car and having it stolen.  One solution to that problem is to use a “key fob” remote — in that case, you take the remote with you and don’t leave it in the car.    Some of the same people who make Craftsman steel garage cabinets and Husky garage cabinets also make solutions for door openers.   They are stylish and they can be easily carried with you.  After all, you wouldn’t leave your keys in your car, would you — especially in plain sight?

Forewarned is forearmed.

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Location — garage storage occurs in one of three spaces:

on the side wall,
on the end wall or
in the space over your head.

Depth — because garage space is limited, you won’t have much depth along the walls to work with, typically 12 to 24 inches — rarely more.  The first thing you should do is measure and decide what “depth” you can use for your garage cabinets.

Organization — there are two critical issues to organizing your garage storage space: 1) deciding what needs to be stored and 2) ensuring  you can find it later!

You will need to decide what should be stored: lawn and garden tools, holiday decorations, sports gear, hobby or craft items, painting supplies, or that cigarbox filled with extra nuts and bolts.  How and where do you put it away? And, more importantly, how do you find it later?

• The most common organizing principle is to store similar items together, e.g., leftover paint in a cabinet you think of as “the paint locker.”
• Another way is to leave the items visible — on a pegboard, in a drawer, or on a shelf visible from afar.
• Don’t forget labels: a box of woodworking tools, labeled ‘woodworking tools” can be more easily located than an unlabeled box.

ALONG THE WALLS

The most common garage storage occurs along the walls, either the side walls or the end walls. Consider these components:
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photo credit: mtneer.                                       . photo credit: berbercarpet.

• full cabinets – these are cabinets that run from the floor to eye level or above.
• half-cabinets (low) – these are cabinets that run from the floor to your waist.
• half-cabinets (high) — these are cabinets, like kitchen cabinets, that are at a eye level or higher.
• corner cabinets – if your garage storage needs to turn the corner from a side wall to an end wall, a corner cabinet could be very useful.
• drawers, shelves or sliders – cabinets are not the only solution. Open shelves, drawers, or sliding shelves also provide excellent storage areas.
• workbench – a workbench can be a simple surface on top of some half-cabinets, or it may be a freestanding, heavy-duty table used for woodworking, crafts or otherwise.
• pegboards, wall hooks and on-the-wall systems – pegboards allow flexible presentation of commonly needed tools and other items. Wall hooks work well to hold garden instruments and  fancy wall systems can support special needs.
• baskets, bins and boxes – don’t forget the simple basket, bin or box, especially those that  are partially open or transparent.  This not only helps with storage, but with the finding what you need later.

courtesy: Tombre

Pegboard systems organize small items

OVERHEAD SOLUTIONS

Most garages have high ceilings, often 10 or 12 feet off the floor. Using that space to store items, especially bulky items is often an excellent storage solution. Consider three alternatives:

• Attached To Ceiling – most overhead solutions are composed of a bracket that attaches to the ceiling joists and extends down 12 to 40 inches. The platform hanging off the brackets can vary from 2 to 8 feet in one dimension and 2 to 4 feet in the other.
• Pulleys and Lifts – another overhead solution is composed of two pulleys attached to ceiling joists, suspending a platform or rectangular basket for storage. The platform can be raised and lowered, either manually or with a garage storage winch.
• In the Rafters — if the ceiling joists are open, the space between the joists and the rafters can be used for long-term storage.

ISSUES

Once you’ve made the major decisions — where the cabinets will go, how deep they are, how to organize your “stuff” and so forth, then the fun begins!

• Should your cabinets be on the floor or above the floor? On wheels? Hanging from the walls?
• What is better? Would, metal, composite or plastic?
• Should you use a professional installer or install it yourself?
• How about environmental considerations — moisture, temperature, wait, hazardous materials?

Check out the other articles and resources here — and good luck with your garage cabinet project!

Wood

“Wood” refers to all sorts of wood — plywood, veneer, natural woods, and even pressboard or particleboard.  There are major benefits to using wood. Normally it is less expensive.  It is easier to paint and maintain.  It is easier to install.  And it is normally it is easier to modify for your particular needs, for example, changing hinges or decorative hardware.

That said, however, wood is susceptible to a destruction by pests, moisture, and age if not properly maintained. This is particularly true for particle board if it is not kept dry.

Another benefit of using wooden cabinets is that they do not need to be “special made” for the garage.  You can repurpose kitchen cabinets, old furniture, and even shipping crates and convert them to use as garage storage cabinets.  By painting them a common color and unifying hardware, you can create the look of a custom-made solution.

Metal

Custom Made Aluminum Cabinets

The most common metal cabinets are steel, primarily stainless steel, and aluminum.  Steel cabinets can be very effective, especially when carrying a heavy load.  Stainless steel and aluminum cabinets are resistant to rust, but still need to be maintained.

Buying metal cabinets works best when you know what you need and want and can buy a complete set of cabinets.  Adding or changing cabinets later is difficult, as the model may no longer be available.

Consider, for example, the cabinets at the left.  What would you do if one of them were damaged?   Or you decided that you needed another one with drawers?   Unless the manufacturer were still making this model, you might have to replace the entire set.

Melamine, Plywood, Particle Board (MDF)

Melamine is heavy, hard to modify but resistant to moisture.  Plywood and particle board is the opposite — not good around water, but easy to modify, paint, install and maintain.   And veneer-covered plywood can be very attractive and durable if not subjected to moist conditions. Largely, this is a matter of aesthetics and personal choice … and cost, of course. I’m not going to argue for one over the other.

Whatever you decide, work with what you have … and it will serve you well!

You even know where to get it all.  Now comes the question.  Do I buy all (or most) the garage cabinets from a single source AND buy installation as part of the bundle?  Or do you buy installation separately?   Or do you do the job yourself?

Assuming you are a reasonably competent handyman or handywoman (otherwise, hire someone!), what should you consider before deciding whether to do-it-yourself?

Cost, Quality and Time – Pick Any Two Out Of Three

There’s a famous saying that all projects have three dimensions: cost, quality and time.  And you can optimize for any two of them, at the expense of the third.  Some examples:

• If you need it fast and good, it will be expensive.
• Taking your time saves money.
• If you do it fast and cheap, it won’t be good.

So, if you have the time and the tools, you can probably do just fine.  After all, with an appropriate amount of time, you can learn what you need to know and even do it over if you must.

credit: mrbill

The actual “how to” courses are beyond the scope of this page, but, basically, installing cabinets is no more complicated than attaching the cabinets firmly the wall (or overhead) when needed. Those cabinets that simply sit on the floor require virtually no installation. The only difference is that some garage cabinets will carry much heavier weights than, e.g., kitchen cabinets).

Metal garage cabinets may require a wrench set and most cabinet suppliers will happily point out the need for anything special – if only so they can sell you what you’ll need.

The only other considerations other than time, money, your skill, special tools and whether installation is bundled with the purchase price of the cabinets is liability for mistakes. If you damage the cabinets during a botched installation, likely you have voided any warranties. And if improper installation causes injury (e.g., a cabinet pulls loose from the wall and falls on someone), you could be liable.

But installing cabinets is not rocket surgery either – most experienced handymen/women can get the job done adequately, within a reasonable time, and without having to buy or learn any exotic new tools or installation methods.