Let’s Tackle It Together: The Garage
We’re a bit embarassed about what we’re about to share with you guys. So we’ll preface it by reminding you that we’re only human. Like you, we tend to be pretty busy and occasionally some projects sink to the bottom of our to-do list as life gets in the way. As is the case with our garage, which suffers from a bad case of Out Of Sight Out Of Mind Sydrome. After all, it’s detached from the house so we don’t really have to see it every day.
Now we’re admittedly a bit hesitant to unveil our dirty secret, but we figured that the best way to keep this task from perpetually being scheduled for “next weekend” would be to open the door to the world and basically shame ourselves into getting ‘er done. So, without further ado (or stalling) here’s the current sad state of our two-car garage:
Yuck, we know. It’s bad. And I probably don’t need to say this, but we literally didn’t move a thing before snapping these pictures. We wanted you to see it in its full box-filled, yard-equipment-strewn and distinctly no-room-for-parking-one-car-let-alone-two glory. In fact we haven’t done significant maintenance on it since its first major clean-up last summer. The shame.
But we’re not just sharing these “befores” to force ourselves to get to work making “afters.” We also want to invite you guys to join us this weekend in giving some TLC to a neglected space in your home. Maybe your garage resembles ours? Or perhaps it’s your shed, attic, basement, closet, or even a junk drawer that’s feeling a bit chaotic? Whatever it is, let’s tackle it together this weekend… and next week we’ll regroup to share our afters (you can post ‘em on our Facebook page or send them to john [at] younghouselove [dot] com). So don’t forget to snap those before pictures up front and those after pics once the happy dance commences on the back end. Sound like a plan? We can’t wait to see your afters. Heck, we can’t wait to see ours either. Stay tuned…
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It honestly doesn’t even look that bad! No room for parking, yes, but I see a lot of potential- there’s not a ton of stuff in there. Maybe some new shelving is all it needs? I can’t wait to see the after, I am sure you guys will add your own little style to it!
Wow, I have seen some pretty messy garages before, yours doesn’t look that bad, I’m sure you’ll get-er-done and still find time to take Burger to the river!!
Ok, if you guys think that is bad you are CRAZY!!
You are human! I’ll snap a before, too. We actually have a “date” set up to binge two rooms of our house this weekend. The guest room became a storage spot! Oops and the garage! You are always one step ahead of me! I LOVE it!
Ooh, yay! I’ve been meaning to organize the hall closet… which is now a place to toss things I don’t have a place for! Get ready for pictures! :)
That is so not even that bad! Buttt I cannot wait to see what you do with it after this weekend! You are inspiring me to venture out to our shed…
The BEST place to look at garage stuff is on the forums on garagejournal.com. Some amazing stuff on there
That’s the before? Are you kidding me? That is not bad. At. All. I’ve seen much, much, much worse.
Honestly, I don’t think your garage looks that terribly bad. I know a lot of people who have a garage that looks the exact same way as youra. I, however, like my garage to fit 2 cars so ours is clear of “junk”, but our basement is horrible. My husband has a HUGE pile of boxes and when we moved in last year he said he would go through “a box a day”, but he never did! Ugh. They literally take up half of the unfinished basement. The problem is that there is no real other storage place in our house. The attic is to hard to get too and hot and the garage needs to fit cars so it must remain clear. Anyways, I can’t wait to see what you come up with!!
haha, looks pretty much like our garage, but ours is a one-car :) I’m excited to see what you do, maybe it will give us some inspiration for ours!
Good luck this weekend, can’t wait to see the heavenly, well-organized “after” shots! Since I’m taking a brief vacation this weekend, I’ll be posting some “before”s and “after”s next week. Thank you, thank you, thank you for the motivation!! :-)
Seriously, your garage is not bad at all! You have inspired me though…I will clean out the alcove under the stairs this weekend. It is sooo bad you can not even walk in!I am afraid of what I might find!
I have seen a lot worse than that!
Our attic needs a good cleaning… we just organized it last year, but you know how things just pile up.
Are you crazy? That looks like my basement storage room after I’ve cleaned it! In my opinion, if the boxes and junk don’t reach the ceiling then it’s not that bad. I’ve seen much worse!
It defintiely has potential though. Soon you’ll be parking the cars in there!
I’ve found that moving to a house half the size of your old one (3,400 to 1,600) is a great way to find motivation to clean out all those nooks and crannies. Especially if you pack yourselves.
However, that garage is not that bad. I have a neighbor who can’t even open their garage door without their mountain of stuff turning into an avalanche. You guys could easy push things to one side and get a car in there.
If I had a garage… you probably wouldn’t be able to open the door to take a picture without getting hurt!! Okay, maybe not that bad. I have a barn that looks very similier to this, but I won’t be working on it this weekend because I’m going to the MOUNTAINS!!! Good luck and have fun with this :-)
Sometimes I wonder if you know…
This weekend all close friends and family are traveling as well as a roommate moving out Saturday…..talk about potential!
Thank you for the challenge, I needed it, you might see multiple projects uploaded.
that is NOTHING! Do I hear whining? Stop rearranging the white ceramic animals and go straighten out the garage! It will take about 15 minutes!
What’s embarrassing for me is that you think THAT’s bad. It looks like a garage “After” to me! ;)
thanks for showing us you have messes too :)
I’m going to -finally- unpack and arrange our office. I’m excited (slash intimidated). It’ll help so much with making us feel more settled in.
I think this is a great idea – give everyone a project to do over the weekend and come back on Monday to see what every one did. You could also do decorating projects or some crafts…or painting something white!?!? Good luck with the garage!
Thank goodness, you aren’t completely perfect. I was wondering where all of these projects take place and what you do with things that are “waiting” to get done. I’m excited to see what your suggestions on what to do with it all.
We are planning to clean out the cars and basement this weekend. Of course, we’ve been saying that since May….
We actually are tackling our garage this weekend!
I wish ours were as “bad” as yours.
Wait until you have 5 kids and have moved 14 times.
That’s what our garage looks like…I can’t even bring myself to snap a “before” pic, ha ha.
This is nothing at all! Yes, it could be better arranged, set up zones,etc. But this is nothing at all. You guys haven’t been there long enough to accumulate too much and I guess it helps that you haven’t lived in many other places together which sometimes leads to “good stuff that doesn’t fit in the current house”.
We are planning to attack our home office this weekend. We have beautiful elfa shelving installed, but have not kept up with our organization! Can’t wait to purge and clean up!
Ha! I say “HA!” at your “messy” garage! My garage (when I had one — it was recently converted to a sunken den) was literally a death trap. We had a piano, lawn stuff, boxes of books, mirrors, bed frames, old dresser peices, potting soil, and about nine zillion old cans of paint. You had maybe three clear spots to step to try and find whatever you were looking for (we rarely had luck). We aren’t super lazy or anything (ahem) but we didn’t own a truck to take the bigger stuff to the dump or Goodwill and our trash service didn’t aloow fr that kind of stuff. So, eventually we hired some Craigslist guys to haul away pretty much everything. Now we LOVE our new cozy sunken den (with laundry room off the back) but need to figure out what colors to paint it. :( Anyhoo…your garage looks great by comparison. :)
OMG, it could be soooooo sooooo much worse! Have you ever seen Clean House on TLC!?!? But, I agree, there’s nothing better than clearing out a major mess! My one car garage is still full of furniture & decor that hasn’t found a home yet in my new house…..maybe before school starts again on Aug 25, I will have unpacked it all and can actually use my garage for my car! Good luck w/ your garage!
I’ve actually never thought about this part of your house before. Interesting to actually see it! What day do you plan on posting the after? I’m excited!
Hey Kasey,
Assuming we can get ‘er done this weekend, we’ll be posting the after photos sometime this coming week. Stay tuned…
xo,
s
I’m actually relieved to know that you have someplace like that. Otherwise, you’d have much less “stuff” than the rest of us.
Come on! That’s not bad at all! I’m not sure you really know what messy is ;)
Um, I don’t know about anyone else, but I’d be thrilled if that was any of my befores. Sometimes I don’t feel like my afters look that good either! Now it’s going to go from whatever space to super garage! Maybe it’ll be motivating…
Oh jeeze, our garage looks like this too. We’re moving out this weekend so we basically have to clean the whole house! Talk about yikes.
Ha ha Alisa is very funny!!!
p.s. I’m a neat freak, so i am giddy to see everyone’s “after” photos!
Seriously…not that bad…I’ve seen far worse.
Our garage is way worse, and we are hoping to tackle it this weekend. I’m embarrassed to show the before pics, but hopefully the after pics will make it ok :)
Give yourself a break–and perhaps a much needed Friday mojito. Ours is a lot worse. I’ll do my best to convince the hubs that we need to finally fill the cracks and refinish our garage floor. Especially since we already bought the kit at Costco.
Em, hate to break this to you (and I am not the first) but there’s actually not that much in there – if you moved everything to the edges you could get the cars in straightway…! You should see my spare bedroom!
lol. ok. i love you guys, but this is NOTHING! haha my parents’ garage is packed to the gills. and dusty. and moldy. and is full of things that haven’t been touched in 20 years. I wish I could somehow get out of helping my parents with their garage by helping you with yours. It would be a lot less stressful :)
I’ve seen much much worse–and no it’s not mine, I don’t even have a garage!
i’m currently in the process of moving in with my boyfriend, and lets just say, its a bachelor pad… i’m really looking forward to sending you the hideous before pictures, and then the hopefully FABULOUS afters. wish me luck kids! he’s a pack rat extraordinaire!
I agree with everyone else: it’s not that bad! It looks like many garage “after” photos!
Sure, your stuff is all over, but it’s just all spread out and not organized. It’s not like it looks like you guys have been squirrelling crap in there for 50 years. ;) You’ve got loads and loads of space!
You guys are seriously too kind. You probably wouldn’t be so generous if I had taken close-up shots of the several cobwebs that I walked through just to take some of the before pictures (there are others, btw – but we’ll probably hold on to them until we can pair them with “afters).
So maybe you all are right. It’s not that clutter, but it certainly just feels very gross in there. Shudder.
-John
Come on down and look at ours. We can get both cars in but there is so much junk around there (we moved in 2007..no excuse) we can hardly get in the cars. Yours is nothing!
If you want a real challenge, come clean out my garage!! Your’s isn’t messy! Can’t wait to see the after pics!
Oh please! I wish I could show you my neighbors (not that mine is neat). Everytime their door is open my mouth drops. There isn’t even a path to walk and the piles are taller than my 5’8″ self! Now… the inside of her house is a totally different story!
Oh this is fun….but I just took care of my “out of sight out of mind” space on monday. Under the sink in the hall bath had some leftovers (a couple electric razors, fancy wash rags, extra aloe…) from my bathroom and then realized I had not look under there in 6 months. NOT COOL!
So I tossed most of it and then brought the needed items into my bathroom so I could see them and use them! Bath with the sea salts tonight. Yippee!
Not much of a before or after but man I feel better.
It is like we are on the same wavelength! We are planning a HUGE cleanout of our garage tomorrow… and I can pretty much say that 95% of what is in there will likely go to goodwill! I posted a before pic on my blog (casadenorwood.blogspot.com) and will definitely be posting an after! Good luck to y’all!
Wow, we certainly didn’t mean to offend you guys, but apparently there are tons of angry readers demanding that we get messier! Sorry for the disappointment but I guess we’re just minimalists by nature so for two people who moved to Virginia in a minivan, our garage sure feels crowded and crazy to us.
Not to worry, we’ll still be tackling the big clean-up this weekend. Rain or shine we have a date with the recycling center!
xo,
s
Come on guys – that garage is totally messy for S&J. I mean, I would have thought their garage had a fancy diy tool shed (even though I know they keep their tools in your kitchen drawers) or some cool art they made and then placed in front of that weird cord hanging in the middle of the back wall. Maybe a painted wall or some cool bins that hold all of their sporting equipment and outdoor supplies.
S&J: for your standards, it’s bad and I can’t wait to see you make it good.
:)