When the weather’s good, it’s time to clean out your garage. That’s what Funktional Home did for one client this past summer and the before and after photos were featured in Angie’s List’s national magazine – maybe you saw the article.
The job was pretty straight forward – transform this garage (see before photo below) from a dumping ground to a functional space fit for a busy family of five. The owner’s wishlist included a place for gardening tools, kids’ toys, bicycles and scooters, household storage, tools, two cars to park in the winter and, oh yeah, a mudroom. Sound like a tall order? Maybe, but nothing we couldn’t handle.
We began here…
Like so many homes, the garage had become a convenient space to dump stuff. Take a family with a busy schedule and three kids and it’s not hard to see how the garage can get out of hand.
But, help was on the way!
Stacey, organizer extraordinaire, came to help me on this job and we got started sorting, purging and categorizing. Once we developed zones in the garage for each category we designed areas with bins, shelves, hooks and peg boards so that every item had a specific place. The bottom line, everything needed a home so that it would be easy for the entire family to maintain the newly organized space. When items have homes that are easy to access, it makes putting things away all the easier and this helps cut down on the “procrastination pile” (you know, that pile of stuff you say you’re going to put away.)
Because this family didn’t have a mudroom inside the house, the owner asked that we create one for her in the garage. With peg board for hanging hats, coats and bags, stack-able plastic bins for shoes and boots, mats for catching the wet and a bench to sit and put on or take off shoes we designated a space near the door to the house that functioned as the mudroom. We even painted the back wall a fun and lively bright orange (a favorite color of the homeowner) to make the space feel less like a garage and more like an extension of the home.
Ahhh, a garage anyone would love to come home to.
With the garden equipment neatly organized, working in the garden was something to look forward to doing.
A place for everything, and everything in it's place.
Bike Central
The mudroom. Ready for winter.
Even scooters and sleds have a home.
