Drive In Drive Out
This summer my eldest secured his driver’s license and with that, a car. The question then arose, where to park it?
The Goal
Fortunately, living in the Midwest, we have a wide street out front and a fairly spacious driveway. He could park in one of those spots. However, I’m a bit leery of drive-by scrapes or the possibility of a bashed-in window (not to mention easy access to sneaking out). Visually, parking in the driveway doesn’t appeal to me. The other issue with parking outside is the weather; snow, hail, ice who wants to deal with that in the morning? So, my summer goal was a novel concept… to park TWO cars in our TWO-car garage.
Like most Americans, half of our garage is used for storage, bikes, gardening supplies, balls, coolers….you get the idea. Fun fact, 82% of Americans that live in houses have 2-car
garages although only 15% use the space to park both cars.
The Process
The first step, as with any organizing project, is to figure out what you have. Everything was taken off the shelves and floor, sorted into like things with like. Along the way, discarding objects that no longer serve us. Gone were the jammed Nerf guns, expired gardening supplies, & broken sleds.
Next step is to process what to keep and assemble accessible ways to store the items. Our garage had a single deep shelf that ran down the back of the structure. Great for piling things on, not great for ease of access. Our handyman remove half of the shelf so we could vertically store bikes and taller objects along the wall. Instead of purchasing hooks to hang items we used long nails for extension cords, rakes, shovels and the like. This worked great because by hanging individually you can simply grab and go.
Mission Accomplished
Ta Da! After just a day of work, the job was finished. My son could easily park safely in the garage.
Two cars easily fit in the garage now!
