The Miami Herald > Home > Living

Living

Logout

Member Center

Weather Forecast

Posted on Sunday, 10.25.09

Key to organization is SPACE: sort, purge, assign, containerize, equalize

Organizing by SPACE

In any organizing job, professional organizer Joanna M. Quandt likes to use the SPACE system, an acronym for sort, purge, assign, containerize and equalize. It's a system devised by another organizer, Julie Morgenstern. Here's how Quandt would apply it to a garage:

Sort: As you're removing things from the garage, group like items together. Put small items on a table or some other waist-high surface so you don't tire from repeatedly bending over.

Work from left to right around the garage and top to bottom. Purge: After everything's out of the garage, decide what you'll keep and what can be given away, thrown away or sold. Have trash bags or boxes handy, and consider loading the giveaways right into your car.

Assign: Once you've culled your possessions, you can more easily take stock of what's left and visualize how much space you'll need to store it. But don't start buying hooks and containers just yet. Instead, look for things that might work for garage storage -- for instance, shelves, chests, rolling carts or desks.

Containerize: Decide what will hang on the walls, what will be stored on shelves, what will be enclosed in cabinets and what can be left on the floor. Once you've used the storage items you have, you can research other options. Measure the items you need to store and the space where you plan to store them.

Equalize: This is the maintenance phase, or keeping the space equal to what it was when you first organized it. Make sure everyone knows where to put away the things they'll be using, Quandt said, and maybe make a game of practicing with smaller children. And be flexible, she counseled. If part of your organizing plan isn't working, change it.

-- MARY BETH BRECKENRIDGE

BY MARY BETH BRECKENRIDGE

Akron Beacon Journal

Signs your garage needs organizing:

• You have to buy a third set of crutches, because you can't remember where in the garage you put the pairs you bought the first two times you stumbled over your kids' sports equipment.

• You're just tired of the mess.

Whatever the reason, now's a good time to start.

If a survey by the Lehigh Group is any indication, many of us need to. The Pennsylvania company, which makes the Crawford brand of storage devices, found that nearly 40 percent of respondents had tripped over clutter in their garage, 22 percent had accidentally hit something while parking a car and 27 percent had hit an object with a car door.

Organizing a garage involves more than cleaning it out and putting things back in neater piles. It requires culling your possessions and devising a plan for handling what's left, and it takes time and work.

But if you do it right, you'll be better able to keep things under control. And that means you won't have to do it again.

It's not essential to hire a contractor or invest in built-in cabinetry to have an organized garage. What is necessary, experts say, is forethought.

GETTING STARTED

Figure on garage organization being a big job -- possibly more than a day if you have a lot of stuff. If the job is overwhelming, start with just the floor, suggested Joanna M. Quandt, a professional organizer in Ohio.

Decide before you start where you'll put everything during the organizing process. You might need to use your yard or perhaps a covered area like a patio. Work on a nice day, so you can keep your stuff outside without worrying about it getting wet.

Designate different areas of your yard or temporary storage area for general categories of items -- sporting equipment, tools, toys and so on. Then, as you remove things from the garage, you can sort them at the same time.

Take the opportunity to rid yourself of the things you don't need, so you'll have less to organize. Letting go of a possession can be hard, but ``have a good reason for keeping it,'' advised Jim McCourtie, president of Garage Closets. Don't keep anything that's broken or anything you acquired ``just in case,'' he said.

WHERE TO PUT STUFF

Once everything's culled and sorted, you can start thinking about how to store it.

Knowing what you have to store will help you choose the right options. Home centers, hardware stores and specialty retailers carry a huge array of devices, including hangers for everything from hand tools to wheelbarrows. You'll find cupboards, shelves, magnetic strips for holding small tools, bins and racks for toys and sporting equipment, peg boards and even hinged hooks that swing out of the way when they're not in use.

Or use what you already have, Quandt said -- old bookshelves, chests of drawers or a simple board attached horizontally to the wall, with nails and hooks for hanging things.

``It doesn't have to be fancy,'' she said. ``It just has to be useful.''

Make sure shelves, cupboards and hooks can hold the weight of your stuff. Garage Closets' cabinet system, for example, uses a special hanging rail that allows its cabinets to hold 400 to 500 pounds each, McCourtie said.

Most hooks and other hardware are labeled with a safe working load, said Jamie Ibrahim, product manager for the Lehigh Group.

Save 50% off regular home delivery subscription!
Click here.

Join the discussion

The Miami Herald is pleased to provide this opportunity to share information, experiences and observations about what's in the news. Some of the comments may be reprinted elsewhere in the site or in the newspaper. We encourage lively, open debate on the issues of the day, and ask that you refrain from profanity, hate speech, personal comments and remarks that are off point. In order to post comments, you must be a registered user of MiamiHerald.com. Your username will show along with the comments you post. Thank you for taking the time to offer your thoughts.

Comments (0)