Step Five: Clean, Organize, and Celebrate!

Wow, doesn't it feel great to get that stuff out of your garage?

Now that you've cleared it out, it's time to organize and clean. A Shop Vac will be your friend at this stage, particularly if it has lots of attachments to get into the crevices and suck out the dust and dirt. 

As tempting as it is to start organizing before you're done decluttering, it's always best to get rid of the extra, unwanted stuff first. I used to buy totes reflexively every time I went to the hardware store. I ended up storing a lot of clutter. I was amazed at the number of empty totes I gave away after the big decluttering before we moved. 

When it comes to storage, there are a lot of systems out there. You can end up spending a lot of money on fancy matching bins. If that's your thing, cool. Personally, I prefer to own less, store less, and use containers I already own, matching or not. Remember, the purpose of storage is easy retrieval. If you're doubtful you'll ever use an item again, you can probably let it go.

Here's a before picture of the garage hobby room. Yikes. I still had stuff in there from my daughter's graduation open house ... last June. And there's Tim's time-trial bike leaning against the freezer. (How convenient. NOT.)

Here are some after pictures. Much better. 

Here's a shot of the main part of the garage. We installed a Gladiator wall system for hanging tools, and I love it. As you can see above, I keep most of my gardening tools right next to my potting table in a standing rack. I'm lazy about my tools, so I have to make it super-easy to put things away.

The final step is to celebrate a clean garage! How will you commemorate all your effort? 

Thanks for visiting. I hope this has been a helpful series. Leave me a comment and let me know what you thought!

Leanne Senter is the winner of my ebook giveaway! Thanks for your comment, Leanne, and enjoy the new Kindle!