The Clutter Diet Blog

Go Vertical in the Garage

@Rubbermaid found this great video on organizing your garage and posted it on Twitter today. Thanks! I am now a big fan of Mag Ruffman, the ToolGirl. Here she talks about how to get your stuff off the garage floor and up onto the wall. Click here if you can't see the embedded video player.

I am in total agreement on going vertical, whether that is a system like this one from Rubbermaid or a shelving unit, or slatwall, or cabinets. (My personal favorite is cabinets because your stuff is hidden away.)

Related posts: Lorie's Garage Floor Makeover, Pimp My Garage

Yea for ToolGirl Mag!!

Gaga for the Garage

Last week our Clutter Diet weekly "menu" plan featured the garage as the "Main Dish" project. It's time to get ready for barbecues and more outdoor sports and activities. I just resurfaced my garage floor in February, and some of you have asked how that is holding up... quite well! I am still going out there to admire it. The only downside is now I am having an urge to mop my garage floor. It gets the normal spots on it and now they are easy to clean, so I want it to stay clean! I think that is so funny.

If you're thinking of cleaning out your garage in the next couple of weeks, you might want to get these Tote Tracs right now while they are on sale-- they have cut the prices almost in half. You may recall I wrote about these right after conference because I think they are really cool! If you put the coupon code "clutterdiet" in the shopping cart checkout you can get (UPDATE: Sorry for the confusion... I meant to say a free upgrade from regular shipping to expedited shipping--not completely free shipping...)free FedEx expedited shipping, too! (This is only for domestic US orders, sorry to my readers elsewhere! I know this was a problem for at least one person)

Enjoy your weekend, everyone! If you want to tackle the garage and need some help, remember that we offer the most affordable advice from real Professional Organizers-- for the price of a pizza we can look at your photos and help you make a plan!

See also previous related post: Pimp My Garage

Lorie's Garage Floor Makeover!

This weekend we undertook a big project to resurface our garage floor. It had two different colors of spilled paint randomly all over the floor (dark green and white-- LOVELY!!), along with 6+ years of oil stains and other unknown car liquids. Not very appealing to come home to every day. I have been wanting to do this for years, and this weekend, the kids were gone camping and the weather was nice, so it was just the right time.

Our intrepid handyman, Dave, helped us with this project since he had done it before. We bought the Quikrete Garage Floor Epoxy coating kits at our neighborhood hardware store, which you can have tinted in many different colors. We chose an olive green, and when you speckle it with the included flakes, it looks kinda like granite, if it ever naturally occurred that color.(?) (you can click on all of these photos for a larger version) Anyway, it looked good with our cabinets and we love it!  Basically you buy one kit per garage bay. We also chose to buy the optional clear sealant to put on at the end. It's about $60 per kit, so the cost for the 3-car garage was $180 for the epoxy coating and $120 for the sealant.

It's a 3-day operation... Friday we took everything out of the garage and got the paint off with this stuff called Jasco (thank goodness for that magical potion!). Then we applied the detergent/etcher that comes in the Quikrete kit. This prepares the surface so that the epoxy will bond properly.

After it dries for 24 hours, you can do the epoxy coating. You paint with a normal paint roller in little sections and then sprinkle the flakes on it in a nice pattern. Saturday Dave did the rolling on of the coating, and my husband followed behind doing the sprinkling. Here is a photo of my sweetie sprinkling the flakes on one of the last sections at the end. It's kind of like a parmesan cheese shaker!

Sunday, after it dried another 24 hours, we put on the final clear coat. Now we are supposed to wait to park our cars on it until at least Wednesday (sigh). Here is a photo of the final product. We keep going out there to admire it!

I realize there are a lot of garage companies out there who do this as a service, and they claim to have higher-quality epoxy, etc. I am sure that is probably true, but this works for us right now and I will let you know if it isn't holding up. However, it really may be worth your time to have someone completely do it for you, since it is pretty time-consuming.   

I hope you like it! It was fun to do... I really believe in making your home a nice place to come home to, and this is the first thing I see when I am driving in.

Organize Your Cargo

I just found a new favorite product!  These car hooks from SpaceSavers.com allow you to easily secure bags and purses and other items so they will not roll around on the floor.  I am using them a lot for grocery bags.  Have you ever found the odd onion or apple under a seat that has inadvertently rolled out of a grocery bag on the floor?  (This photo is from SpaceSavers.com.)

A related product to this are "Trunk-Eez."  I love how you can Velcro them (is Velcro a verb?) to the car's carpet wherever you want to create a barrier in your trunk to partition off items.  I have used these a bunch of times to keep heavy things from sliding around in the trunk or tipping over.  These come in a set of 3 that stack when you're not using them.  (This photo is also from SpaceSavers.com.)

Have you thought about organizing your car lately?  Our members can get much more information on this by clicking here and logging in to our site. 

Pimp My Garage

A recent Time Magazine article did a great job of covering the garage remodeling trend. Did you know that The Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University estimates that we spent $2.4 billion improving our garages in 2003, which is double what we spent the previous decade?

Why? We have more stuff. In our work, we've always referred to the garage as the "Final Frontier" for clutter. You may get it out of the daily flow of your life, from the kitchen or bedroom or office, but then where do you put it? Usually, the garage... it's the ultimate "put it here for now" space in your home. It's on it's way out... but not quite gone.

People are spending over $10,000 on their garages, putting in special flooring, specialty workbenches, and even wine storage. The garage looks as good as any other room in the house-- clean and tidy. What I want to know is, now where is their "stuff" hiding?