25 Ways to Organize Your Garage for Fall

The garage is so frequently used as a catch-all for home improvement projects and off-season gear, these easy cabinets will be well worth your time and dollar. We’ve come up with plans for an easy storage system that can be modified to suit any garage. The best part? An 8-foot tall unit clocks in at only about $27 per linear foot–less than what pre-assembled shelving at the home center would run you. The materials include melamine, selected for its reasonable cost and the fact that is needs no finish, plus pine 1x4s. Plan out your configuration with masking tape on the wall and floors, ensuring that each cabinet has at least on stud behind it so it can be securely fastened.

Let’s face it. No matter how big your garage is, there never seems to be enough room to store everything. But by making ultra-efficient use of the narrow area on the sidewall of your garage, this storage project can help. The heart of the system is a series of double-sided rollout shelves that allow easy access to everything that can be stored in a narrow space. With these rollouts, you don’t have to store your paint cans, nails, screws and other stuff four layers deep and then shuffle everything around to find what you’re looking for.

When the shelves are pulled out, everything is in full view and easily accessible. Plus, the garage looks neat and tidy when the shelves are pushed back in. Don’t worry if you’ve also got some large items to store. The 16-ft.-long top shelf is 32 in. deep to hold big storage containers, and there’s a 3-ft.-wide section of 16-in.-deep shelves for medium-size items. The storage unit is 16 ft. long, 84 in. tall and 16 in. deep. Get the plans to make your own.

Ever wish you had one more garage wall to hang stuff on? Well, you do. Your garage door is a perfect place for extension cord storage. (Yes, they’ll stay put when the door opens and closes.) Install screw eyes diagonally about 8 in. apart and thread bungee cords (with the ends cut off) through them for perfect extension cord storage. Now you have a perfect bungee “corral” to hold your extra extension cords.

Who couldn’t use a few more shelves in the garage? You probably already have shelves in the obvious spots, but what about in the corners? This nifty corner shelf unit takes advantage of existing studs, and it’s fast, easy and cheap. And it’s great for can storage ideas. Use scrap plywood or oriented strand board to make shelves that fit snugly between the corner studs and support them with 1×1 cleats. These corner shelves are perfect for storing smaller items such as glues, oils, waxes and polishes, which get lost on larger shelves.

Stow bulky items overhead by cementing together a simple rack from 2″ PVC pipes and fittings. Bolt the straight pipe to the ceiling joists to support heavy loads, and screw the angled pieces from the ‘wye’ connectors into the cross brace to stabilize the whole rack. The PVC’s smooth surface makes for easy loading and unloading.

Here’s the straight solution for keeping bikes, trikes, garden tools and car bumpers from being squashed by a descending garage door (or keep them from triggering the electric eye). Close the garage door and press down a strip of 2-in.-wide masking tape along the inside edge. Lay another strip of tape 1-1/2 in. to the outside of the first. Spray on the line, pull the tape and let dry. Now when you close the door, glance at the line to be sure the door will seal on concrete, not on a tool or the tail of your sleeping cat.

Cardboard concrete-forming tubes are inexpensive ($7 at any home center or find them online on Amazon) and provide a great place to store baseball bats, long-handled tools and rolls of just about anything. Rest the tubes on a piece of 2×4 to keep them high and dry. Secure each tube to a garage stud with a plumbing strap.

If you have lots of rakes, shovels, brooms and garden tools cluttering your garage, but not a lot of wall to hang them on, try this. Cut two 16 x 16-in. pieces from 1/2-in. plywood and screw them to a wall stud at a slight upward angle. Then slide in your tools.

Take some time this fall to rotate your bins and other storage for easy access throughout the season. Move summer items to the back and pull forward any Halloween or winter holiday items. If you store winter sports gear in the garage, pull those bins to the front for easy access. Plus: Garage storage tips to maximize every inch of your garage.

Lawn products like seed and fertilizer soak up moisture in damp garages. To keep them fresh, store them in giant zip-top bags. Learn how to grow a lush lawn here.

For those folks who have some height, a rarely used ladder doesn’t have to take up valuable storage space on the wall. Build simple racks by screwing 2x4s together, then screw the racks to the ceiling joists. Be sure to position the racks where they won’t interfere with the garage door. Secure the ladder with an elastic cord so it can’t fall off. Plus: 51 ways to organize your garage.

Brackets designed to support closet rods make a brilliant bike rack. Add some adhesive-backed felt or hook-and-loop strips to prevent scratching your bike.

Most people hang ladders high on the wall. But often, lower is better. It makes ladders easier to grab and, since ladders are skinny, this will leave floor space open for parking cars, bikes or the mower. Learn how to organize your garage in one morning here!

Visit any sporting goods store and you will likely see walls of vertical slats with various hooks and bins that can be rearranged easily based on the display needs. Why not incorporate this easy-to-manage system in your own home with our DIY customizable garage storage? Incorporating many of the same features which make the retail systems so useful, this system is a great weekend project that can grow and change as your needs evolve—and is a cinch to install. Plus: Here are even more garage makeover ideas to fuel your inspiration.

If wall space is at a minimum, consider looking up for potential sports equipment storage space. With this smart and easy overhead storage system, you don’t have to sacrifice space. Simple and fast to construct, this sliding bin system is made with everyday items, making it a perfect weekend project with long-lasting results. To make it easy to find what you’re looking for, use a permanent marker, or spray paint and stencils to mark the bottom of the bin.

Balls that roll and bounce are great for play, but not so much for storage. Luckily there’s this garage ball storage rack, which can be mounted anywhere and will corral all those balls to prevent them from rolling all around your floor. Plywood, dowels, and elastic cord are the simple main components of this easy-to-make storage hack. Customize the size based on your own needs and store away!

Organize your auto lubricants, fluids and other items in this simple shelf/work table cabinet. You can mount a fold-up door on special hinges, but we’ll show you a faster method of how to organize your garage that requires just a couple of bucks’ worth of hardware.

This DIY garage storage system has the versatility of expensive store-bought systems, but you can make it yourself for a few hundred dollars in a single weekend.

Here’s how to store your lawn and folding chairs so they’re out of your way. Take two pieces of 1×4 lumber (any scrap lumber will do) and create some simple, cheap and useful brackets on the wall. Cut each board 7-3/4 in. long with a 30-degree angle on both ends. Fasten pairs of these brackets with three 2-in. screws to the side of the exposed wall studs, directly across from each other, and you’ve got a perfect place to hang your chairs. Get more ideas for garage storage.

Store-bought shelving units are either hard to assemble and flimsy or awfully expensive. Here’s a better solution. These shelves are strong and easy to build and cost about $70. We sized this sturdy shelf unit to hold standard records storage boxes ($4 each). If you want deeper storage, build the shelves 24 in. deep and buy 24-in.-deep boxes. If you prefer to use plastic storage bins, measure the size of the containers and modify the shelf and upright spacing to fit.

Refer to the dimensions shown to mark the location of the horizontal 2×2 on the back of four 2x4s. Also mark the position of the 2×4 uprights on the 2x2s. Then simply line up the marks and screw the 2x2s to the 2x4s with pairs of 2-1/2-in. wood screws. Be sure to keep the 2x2s and 2x4s at right angles. Rip a 4 x 8-ft. sheet of 1/2-in. MDF, plywood or OSB into 16-in.-wide strips and screw it to the 2x2s to connect the two frames and form the shelving unit. If you choose plastic bins rather than cardboard boxes, label the plastic with a wet-erase marker. When it’s time to relabel the bin, just wipe away the marks with a damp rag. No room for floor-standing shelves? Build this sliding storage system on the ceiling.

If you mount hooks, brackets and other hardware only on studs, you’re wasting lots of opportunities for garage wall ideas. The best strategy is to add a layer of three-quarter inch plywood over the drywall or bare studs. That gives you a continuous fastening surface so you can mount storage hardware easily, arrange items in a space-efficient way and cram more stuff onto the wall. See how we doubled the storage capacity of this wall with plywood and inexpensive hardware.

If all the stuff in your garage is within easy reach, you’re probably wasting lots of storage space. The high spaces may not be prime real estate for often-used tools, but they’re perfect for long-term storage. Deep shelving or cabinets near the ceiling can hold a ton of seasonal stuff like holiday decorations or camping gear.

If your garage does double duty as parking space and work space, a rolling workbench is essential. It lets you convert your garage into a workshop quickly and rolls up against the wall to restore parking space. The version shown here began as a standard rolling bench made from 2x4s and plywood. Then we added a slick feature: Heavy-duty shelf brackets that make it the Swiss Army knife of workbenches.