5 Tips for Organizing a "Real Life" Garage

Is your garage cluttered and overwhelming?  Has it become a dumping ground for anything that doesn't have a home anywhere else?

Now, be honest, do you avoid organizing your garage because you can't afford those fancy garage organizers you see on Pinterest and in magazines?

There are some mighty beautiful garages out there.  I'm happy for those people who have them.  But most of us have plain ole' ordinary garages.  Sure, we can do some things to pretty them up, but they're still not going to be magazine worthy.  But they don't need to be beautiful.  We don't live in our garages.  We store things in them.  And hopefully have space to park a vehicle in them.  If we have limited funds for organizing, more often than not we'd rather spend those dollars inside our homes, where we spend more time.

Having a "real life" garage doesn't mean it has to be unorganized though!  I've got about as ugly a garage as you can get... you'll see in the pictures.  But I do my best to keep it organized.  And I just use basic stuff to do it.

Blogiversary Week: Popular Post #4 {and a Giveaway!}

This week to celebrate my first year blogiversary, I've been sharing some of my favourite and most popular posts from the past year.

And today I'm adding a giveaway as well!  {More on that in a minute}

It's been fun looking back at the past year and I hope you've enjoyed this trip down memory lane too!  Or if you're a relatively new follower, hopefully you've enjoyed some posts that were new to you!

I'll wrap up this blogiversary celebration today with one last flashback post:

Garage Clean Out Part 2

In Garage Clean Out Part 1 I told you I joined the Great Garage Clean-Out Challenge and showed you how I followed the first 3 steps of Laura from OrgJunkie's PROCESS.  Today I'll show you the last 4 steps and reveal what the garage looks like now.  Here's a before and after shot of the whole garage:

Garage Clean Out Part 1

For the last few weeks I've been "watching" other people clean out and organize their garages through the pictures they've shared on their blogs.  It inspired me to tackle our garage so I'm joining the Great Garage Clean Out Challenge (a few weeks late but better late than never right?!).  This challenge was designed to be completed over the course of 4 weeks (and 4 blogs) but I'm catching up so I'll do this in 2 blogs.

First of all, let me say that our garage was LONG overdue for a major clean out.  The amount of stuff that gets dumped there or accumulates there makes this an overwhelming area so we keep putting it off.  But no more!  Last weekend my husband and I took on the challenge.  Here's a "before" picture of the whole garage: