5 Steps to Make Spring Cleaning Your Garage Easy
It’s getting to be that time of year again: the days are getting warmer, the lawns are getting greener and the “honey-do” lists are getting longer. High on many of those lists is the annual spring cleaning of the garage.
The very idea sends a shudder down most folks’ spines. Over the course of the past year, your garage has very likely become the repository for much more than you ever imagined might be stored – or strewn – there. Now you feel like you’re facing an immense mountain of “stuff” with no idea how to make sense of it all, much less clean and organize everything.
What you need, my friend, is a plan. A cleaning strategy, if you will. And as a top custom garage builder, we know how to help! Here is a tried and true plan of attack for your garage’s spring cleaning:
BREAK IT DOWN
You know the answer to the old riddle, How do you move a mountain? One stone at a time! If you look at a year’s worth of accumulated stuff piled up in the garage all at once, you will feel overwhelmed. Where do you even begin? The answer to that riddle is, simply: somewhere. Break the job up into smaller sections, and focus on clearing out one section at a time. Before you know it, you’ll have successfully tamed that wild accumulation, and that it wasn’t nearly as bad as you feared.
THE MORE THE MERRIER
Make an event out of your spring garage cleaning! Recruit the family, invite friends and neighbors, and plan to celebrate with a cookout after the job is done. Many hands make the job go more quickly, and having other folks around helps to keep your thoughts from focusing on the perceived drudgery of the task. Cleaning the garage can actually be – dare I say it? – fun!
CLEAR OUT
OK, you’ve divvied the garage into sections and assembled your spring cleaning army. The first step is the biggest: take everything out of the garage. Everything. Cars, sports equipment, tools, unlabeled mystery boxes – whatever it may be currently residing in your garage, it’s time to pull it out into the light of day. Don’t stop until everyone’s section of the garage is clear.
CLEAN UP
A garage can collect a lot of dust and debris over the course of a year. Spider webs will hang from any opportune location. Dirt gets tracked in during summer months; road salt hitches a ride in on your car in winter months. If you maintain a woodworking space within your garage, you’ll often find piles of sawdust in unexpected places. Though you try to keep up with sweeping it all out, it’s just the nature of garages in general to become dusty and dirty. Now that you have everything out of the garage, you have the perfect opportunity to go beyond simple sweeping. Rent a power-washer or compressed air tank and really get that dustiness and mustiness out of the garage. Use a shop-vac to clear out especially stubborn corners. Clean any windows and make any needed repairs to panes or fixtures. Make sure all the lights are working. Use a portable radio some other small plug-in appliance to test every outlet.
A PLACE FOR EVERYTHING
Now the real fun starts: deciding where everything belongs in the garage. Choose a proper home for everything: tools, sports equipment, auto accessories or whatever else you decide will continue to live in the garage. As you are going through the piles of stuff you pulled out of the garage earlier, consider whether it belongs in the garage or not. If it does, then make sure it is put in its proper place; if it doesn’t, make a decision whether it’s an item to keep, sell or donate, or throw away. Three large boxes or plastic bins make great system of sorting those three categories. When you decide something is going in the “keep” bin, ask yourself one question: have I needed this or used this in past year? If the answer is no, ask yourself again whether you really need to keep it. These spring garage cleanings are a perfect time to declutter!
With these five easy steps, you’ll find your garage almost as clean as the day it was built, your world a little less cluttered, and the job much less time-consuming drudgery than you might have thought.
If you are looking at building a garage or expanding the one you already own, talk to the certified builders at Conestoga Buildings. Request a quote today!