Now that you have done your spring-cleaning, most of the hard work is over. At this point, many wooden garage owners do nothing more until spring-cleaning the following year. However, this is not the time to sit on your haunches. Having everything clean and organized now is great, but what happens after a few weeks of consistent use? A few months? By the time a whole year rolls around, the whole wooden garage is in need of another deep clean. To keep everything neat and clean for more than 5 seconds, you will need a plan! Even if you think staying tidy isn’t possible for you, this isn’t true. In fact, these 4 hacks will keep your wooden garage clean and neat the whole year through!
Top 5 Wooden Garage Hacks
#1. Label Everything
While some people decide to use plastic bins, others opt for cabinets, metal trashcans, plastic drawers, or boxes. No matter what containers you are using to hold your stuff, labeling everything is a must!
If you don’t have the things in your garage organized, this is your first step. Five years from now you may not remember what a certain word or phrase means to you, so divide everything up by categories that make sense. As soon as you fill a container, label it. Don’t leave the labeling until the end, especially if you are doing your wooden garage cleaning in sections. You wouldn’t want to forget what is in the box, or get them confused later.
The best way to tag your stuff is to use a label maker. Unfortunately, not everyone has one of these handy. However, they are quite cheap to purchase at a craft store. Label makers work best, because they print words precisely to your desired dimensions. The fonts on these are great if the person using the wooden garage the most has trouble seeing. Not only are the letters large and in charge, the labels themselves are laminated. That means they can get humid, wet, and sweaty without running down your nice containers onto the wood.
#2. Avoid Using Your Wooden Garage as a Catchall
There are some things we just don’t feel ready to throw away, and that’s okay. Just don’t store that item in your wooden garage. One reason we get into so much trouble with cleaning is that we don’t like to throw things away. Some things have sentimental value, others monetary value. Still others we are attached to for reasons unknown. Finally, we have gifts we don’t want, but feel bad about throwing away.
Before your wooden garage becomes a dumping ground, ask yourself some questions. Can I part with this? If not, why is it going into storage? Things like Christmas decorations and other seasonal items are fine to store. Anything you think you are on the fence about, yet are willing to put in your wooden garage, get ride of. You can always donate, re-sell, or even re-gift. Maybe it is time for someone else to get attached to your stuff!
#3. Change your Mindset about your Wooden Garage
Changing your habit of putting everything in the garage is difficult. There is no question walking something out to a virtually invisible room and dumping it somewhere is easy. However, this is one case where taking the easy route now will leave you with a difficult route later. Eventually, you will have to deal with your wooden garage. Thinking about this can actually produce noticeable anxiety, and lead to procrastination. It is like an endless cycle. Throw things you don’t wan to deal with in the garage, feel guilty, put off cleaning, and then everything begins again. So how do you stop getting caught in the same behavior patterns?
Change your mindset. It is easier said than done, but it is well worth it to keep your wooden garage clean and neat. There are two ways we recommend. First, try to think of this space as off limits to extra storage. Imagine it as completely at capacity. Since there is no extra room, the only way you can put in something new is to take something old out. What you do with that item is up to you. Use it inside your home, or toss it. The important thing is that you will avoid gathering more clutter than acceptable.
The following is the second way of changing your mindset. Make a rule that anything new brought into your wooden garage has to be put somewhere permanent straight away. Once the recycling pile grows out of its container or the camping gear starts taking over, you have two choices. The first is to figure out how to keep the stuff contained inside its specified area. This may require getting rid of some older things. The second way is usually preferred. Give your stuff a larger space! Buy a new container, or shuffle some things around to expand the area.
#4. Set Physical Boundaries
This is especially important if you have children or other family members with problems cleaning. Nonetheless, setting physical boundaries can help anyone with a wooden garage stay organized. Some people hang up a tennis ball so they know where to stop their car. Others use tape to mark their parking space. We recommend using tape for areas that don’t have containers. This could be your recycling and bike storage on the floor, or just a way to set boundaries on shelving and inside cabinets. One way to keep children observing these rules is by taking away the item they misplaced for an appropriate time. This will teach them the importance of putting everything where it came from.
Keep Your Wooden Garage Clean Year Round
As you may well know, the world won’t stop turning if your wooden garage gets dirty. However, you also know you will be left with a bigger job when you finally decide to clean. This is why these 4 hacks are so important to keeping your wooden garage clean year around.
