Garage Cabinets - Choosing the Right Ones

So, you have a garage and some room for storage - great. Remember: Before ordering your garage cabinets, it's best to plan! You don't want to have cabinets that won't store your "stuff" or, worse, that hide things where you can't find them.

First, assess the space you have. Do you have a wide garage? A long one? How tall is your garage? Can you hang shelves from the ceiling without interfering with your other uses? Be realistic. Measure!

Next, decide what you want to store in your garage. This may seem obvious, but, when you think about it, you probably have more to store than you have room. Make a list of EVERYTHING you might want to store in the garage and decide what gets stored there vs. in the kitchen, basement, etc. Consider:

* tools
* paint and painting supplies
* bikes
* off-season holiday decorations
* sports equipment
* wood, metal and raw materials used for building projects
* supplies for a pool
* gardening gear and supplies
* off-season clothing
* exercise equipment
* garbage (before being set outside)
* shipping crates, luggage
* automotive accessories

The list could go on, but you get the point: First you must assess what you want to store before you can decide how best to store it.

Next, you will need to consider, for each item stored, how you will find and retrieve it after it's stored. All of us have stored something so "well" that we never could find it again! So, be sure to plan for retrieval and not just storage - and here are some tips:

1. Group like items together

- hand tools all in one place,

- Christmas ornaments together in a single box

- painting supplies all in one cabinet

- sports equipment in one corner

2. Make items visible

- organize in "thin slices" in drawers or shelves so items are only one-level deep (or visible from the edge of a shelf)

- add labels on boxes, e.g., "Summer Clothes"

- leave items in plain view (e.g., pliers and screwdrivers on pegboards attached to the wall, or lawn rakes attached to a hook on the wall)

- use see-through shelves or plastic containers

3. Consider how frequently you need to retrieve the items. Christmas decorations or any off-season storage is a once-a-year item. A flashlight or screwdriver needs to be available frequently.

Okay, you have THOUGHT THROUGH what you will store, and how you will retrieve it. Now comes the fun part - selecting the cabinets:

Remember garage cabinets are simply cabinets found in a garage. They aren't super special, despite what the vendors say. Kitchen cabinets are designed to carry about the same weight, and they work fine in a garage. A good chest of drawers will suffice for most items you'll need to store. If you don't mind the poor aesthetics of unmatched items, you can re-use many of your existing household storage solutions in the garage (and maybe buy a new bookshelf for the living room!)

But assuming you need to get some additional garage cabinets, decide what you need from the most common units:

* workbenches with open shelving or drawers beneath
* wall cabinets (at eye level, like those in the kitchen)
* open shelving
* full cabinets (ones that sit on the floor and extend 6 or 7 feet tall)
* utility shelving (for heavy or wide items)
* overhead shelves
* pegboard systems and other garage storage systems

Buying what you need is relatively easy: You can visit your local building supply store or shop online, where perfectly suitable solutions are available. There are lots of choices - size, strength, internal dimensions (e.g., space between shelves) as well as material (wood, metal), price and color. You can buy matched sets of cabinets, or if you have a hodge-podge of units, you can paint them all the same color and gain some cohesion that way.

Last, you need to install the cabinets - which can be done by the homeowner, a handyman or by the professional installer who delivers/installs some of the higher-end garage cabinets you can purchase online.

From start to finish, you plan will be fun and rewarding, and the end product will be a functional garage storage solution you can be proud of.