Garage Clean Up Challenge: Done!

I am super, SUPER excited to show you the results of a month long Garage Clean out project! My space has come sooo far, the "after" pictures literally make me giddy excited!

Here is some background of this project first, for those just coming in:

I decided a couple of months ago to work on cleaning this garage as well as a bunch of junk and garbage in our yard, left by years of previous owners of this house. Here in Nova Scotia, it is not as easy as it should be to get rid of stuff. There are so many recycling laws and regulations that it makes everything confusing! So instead, stuff gets thrown in the bushes. Great solution, right?

I decided that in order to be good stewards of what God has given to us, and since God has commanded us to do things "decently and in order," the mess had to go. You can view all the before pictures here. 

When Laura announced a garage project for the month of May, I knew I was in! It was the perfect way to really get myself in gear to get it done in a timely manner! Besides, there were a lot of things in our garage that were getting ruined or not able to be used because of the condition of the garage. When something breaks or falls apart, we often say "They don't make things like they used to!" But sometimes perhaps that item would have lasted longer if we had just taken better care of it! The trouble is, our society has gotten so affluent that we don't care about our things any more. There was a day when everything a person had was a result of hard work, sweat, and precious pennies, and those items were considered valuable! Now, we have so many things readily available at our fingertips, and we don't value what we do have!

Yes, I'm ranting. :) The point is, if things are clean and have a place of their own, it is easier to take care of them and keep them nice. So that is just what I set out to do!

Here is the before:

When Laura said challenge, she really meant it! It has been a hard month of work, but here is the great reveal!!

(Roll your mouse on and off the photo below to see the amazing transformation!)



Let's take a tour, shall we??

The workbench to the right has lots of stuff on top still - stuff that is in the male department! :) There is a chain saw in millions of pieces, plus lots of other things I don't dare move, so I left that all to the males to take care of. It is their workspace, after all! I did organize as much as I could, and the shelves above and beneath got put to better use. All the tools in black cases are on one shelf:

All the cans on another, etc. It looks much better!

The Christmas totes are now sitting on wood planks, not random pieces of gutter, broken siding, and fluorescent light bulbs. Much safer! I am thankful for this overhead storage!

And can we just talk about those fluorescent light bulbs for a second....

These are just a small fraction of the burnt-out bulbs we got rid of. We took 3 full boxes to the hazardous waste site today. Who knew that fluorescent light bulbs were hazardous waste??

These shelves are working overtime, packing tons of (now organized) storage...

Those three white drawers are re-purposed from our house. We took them out last year, and they've just been sitting around. It was either use 'em or lose 'em, so I opted to use them to corral some things in. 

All our game and sporting equipment is organized in its own little corner. the two tubs on the floor hold balls, and there are other raquets and such on the wall above, that you can't see in this picture.

All our winter gear - snow scoops, sleds, etc - got stored in the back of the shed, since we won't be needing it for a while! When the time comes to use them again, we can swap them out with bikes or other summer things. Our rakes, brooms and shovels used to hang along this wall, but it seemed pointless to have those things in the back of the room, where it was hard to get to them!

The grey partitions belong to the church, so unfortunately they had to stay, since there isn't a place to store them down there. We shoved them back in the corner as much as we could!

Interesting fact: We had 7 gas cans. Seriously, 7???!!! I got rid of two that didn't even have spouts (!!!) and we kept the others.

Oh, and lets just talk about the door. It can now open for the first time since we've lived here. :) Above it is more overhead storage with more Christmas totes.

These freezers are still with us, for now. I'm still working on listing/donating these, and when they are finally outta here, I plan to make this corner a storage area for our gardening supplies. That way they will all be in one handy place, at the front where we can access them easily.

Here are the rakes, brooms and shovels for now. I'm planning to hang these on the wall, but again, some of them will have to wait until those freezers are buh-bye.

Lets take a peek at the after shot again:

Under the ping-pong table are a few other items that still need to be listed/donated, but I'm slowly chipping away at those things! There are also a few bikes and lawnmowers not pictured here. those things get used daily around here, so they will just be parked in that big open space you see at night and brought out again the next day. If and when we want to play ping pong (on the table that you can now get to!!) we just need to push those things back and pull the table to the center of the room!

Well, there it is, folks! Still a few things to do, but I am calling this project as good as done! It is so rewarding to go out there and see it...literally, I just stand there gazing, I can't get over how great it turned out!

Just one more time - humor me - the before....

And the after...

I'm so thankful to my family who helped with some things this week, did the things that needed big strong man-muscles, and did other various small jobs for me. (Carrie can do some mean sweeping, lol!) I was rewarded today with a large iced coffee from Tim Hortons. And let me just say, as much as I like Tim's they can't do an iced coffee like Dunkin can. For the record.

Can't wait to see everyone else's spaces!

***Update: Click on over to this recent post to see another little change that happened over the weekend!