Mandi of Life… Your Way and I have teamed up to bring you a special series over the next two weeks called Preparing Your Home for the Holidays.
On any given fall Saturday afternoon, you’re bound to find our family tailgating in our garage, watching the Ohio State Buckeyes play football with friends and neighbors while the kids play out back. This has been an ongoing tradition, so we actually overhauled our garage back at the end of the summer.
And we really did overhaul it then. Our garage was full of miscellaneous empty boxes and just plain junk that wasn’t worth donating. We considered renting a dumpster, but then I stumbled across this new service called The Bagster. It’s basically a dumpster service on a smaller scale — you just purchase a bag from Home Depot, Lowe’s, etc. for about $30, and then you schedule a pickup when you have it filled!
We didn’t really need a huge dumpster, and The Bagster was less than half the price we would have paid for one even including the pickup fee.
So how about a quick tour of our garage now?
This is my stockpile shelving and our extra refrigerator and deep freezer. I’m not sure how we managed without the refrigerator previously — we probably made far too many trips to the store because these kids go through milk like crazy!
This is one of my favorite features that my handy husband built. We had a ton of unused space above our garage door, so he installed shelving for items that we don’t need access to frequently, like our Christmas lights, snow blower, pressure washer, etc.
I also especially love these hooks that he installed for the kids’ bikes. Five bikes can really eat up a lot of space in a garage, so this is a convenient way to keep them out of the way but still accessible for when they get the itch to ride.
Rubbermaid makes some fantastic garage organization solutions, including this track that has many different hangers. The ball storage unit is awesome, and it’s great to be able to hang tools exactly where you need them.
Keeping our garage in this condition has actually been pretty easy. Once everything has a home created for it, it’s just a matter of ensuring that you return it to its proper place when you use it. Just a quick sweep, and our garage was photo ready!
You can join us in Preparing Your Home For The Holidays over the next couple of weeks by using the handy printable checklists that Mandi has created for each room of the house! And of course we’d love to hear your tips and tricks for getting your home ready for the holiday season.
jonie
the snow blower is damn heavy….how do you managed to get it up there?
Tara Kuczykowski
LOL, that’s hubby’s realm — apparently he muscled it up there somehow. Now the trick is getting it back down!
jonie
i think putting up is more difficult than taking it down..haha.
Heidi
I am interested how you get the bikes off the hooks easily. We have 5 kids as well and between strollers and bikes, we have no space in our garage!! A bike solution would be soooo helpful!!
Tara Kuczykowski
The bikes are up out of the way but still within arm’s reach, so you just have to lift them slightly to pull them down off the hooks. It really was one of the biggest space savers, and the hooks were super inexpensive!
Lindsey
Is all of that cardboard recycled? I hope so. That’s a lot of waste to sit in a landfill. :(
mary
Thanks for sharing Tara! What items can I store in the garage that will survive our central
Ohio winters? TIA!
Tara Kuczykowski
My stockpile shelf is against an interior wall, so I haven’t had issues with anything freezing. But I’d say dry goods and most canned goods should hold up okay. You’d definitely want to keep any oils inside, but that’s not something most people typically stockpile anyhow.
Kim
These are GREAT!! Thank you so much!!
melaniel
Would LOVE To know how your hubby did the storage above the garage door! We use our garage as our home gym so need storage off the floor.
Shannon
I would love to know that also!
Tara Kuczykowski
I’m going to see if I can get him to do a tutorial on it because I’ve had a lot of interest offline as well. From what he’s told me it wasn’t that difficult!
jonie
Looks like your garage is not for parking cars but for parking “food”. haha.
How do you keep your garage clean? Our garage always have spider webs and dust. It is also very cold at this time of the year and super hot on summer. I try not to go out unless i need to …like throw rubbish. :(
Tara Kuczykowski
LOL, that is so true! My husband flys RC airplanes as a hobby, so he’s often out there fiddling around with them. Since he’s out there frequently, he’s pretty good about giving it a good once over every couple of weeks. Also, it definitely stays cleaner in the fall when we’re out there tailgating nearly every week.
Shelly T.
I was excited about possibly using The Bagster when we clean out our garage until I saw that in addition to purchasing for $30.00 we would also have to pay a $99.00 pick up fee!!
Tara Kuczykowski
Yes, there is a pickup fee. However, to rent a dumpster around here is about $300. We didn’t need a huge dumpster, so it was more economical for us in the long run.