Shoe & Ski Lover meets 500 sq ft space.

Katy is a friend of ours at Rubbermaid.  She was very stressed out about her small apartment (less than 500 square feet) and a lack of storage.  

To make matters worse, she had a very tiny clothing closet, which barely fit her clothes, much less her  shoes or her sporting equipment.  She had been trying to maintain a system in the living room which consisted of racks and just having the items laid on the fireplace.

 

However, as the shoes started to "grow" (Katy admits to a strong shopping addiction) and the equipment solution limited space and was unsafe, she realized a solution was imperative.

Here's what I like about Katy's thought process:
She defined the issue and what was important to her.  A priority to her was keeping all of her equipment which she enjoys.   She knew that there would be no room for future purchases. 

She selected Rubbermaid FastTrack.  This system is traditionally used in the garage, but we see that a number of people re-purpose it (including the guys in the office, blogger Shannon, and myself in my utility closets).

Below is the result:

Katy comments, "This isn’t a closet system, but I wouldn’t have a closet to put it in
anyway! This way I can grab what I need and go, without worrying I am going to trip over my skis and break my ankle.” - Katy

I love her attitude and the fact she embraced the notion, "It's your life.  Organize it your way."

Nice job, Katy!

My Garage Adventure – The Inspection

The day had arrived, Professional Organizer, Allison Carter, was coming to our home to assess the mess in our garage.  My girlfriends kept saying, “You are so lucky!”  My mom kept saying, “I’m the one in need of an organizer!” And even up until the last hour, my dear husband kept asking, “Really, you’re not going to clean it up first? Really!  Really?”

Having someone come into your home and assess your mess IS a little intimidating, I have to admit.  Allison, however, has a straightforward approach that put us quickly at ease as we began trying to account for why we had all this stuff and what we wanted to do with it.  The session went something like this:

• Make a list of all the types of things we need to accommodate: gardening, fishing, golf, sports, refrigerator, trash / recycling, storage of extra supplies, etc.
• Next Allison helped us think about what the best kind of container was for each need.  This is where I would have gone off track because I would have jumped to step three of placement.  By thinking about the container first, we really focused on how we use items and what the most convenient day in and day out storage solution would be.
• Finally, based on all the types of storage we would need, Allison helped us lay it out within the space of our garage.  We put things into zones and figured out how to utilize our vertical space better.  She even made mock ups on pictures to help us visualize.

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In the next few weeks we are going to be ordering the storage solutions we will need and editing.  This is the pro way of saying we have to throw some stuff out!  Fortunately, many of the things we no longer have a use for can be donated.  I will be working with a couple of our local organizations to schedule a donation pick up, order a rolling recycling bin and finally cleaning the garage.  All of this seems really appropriate in the spring, and I keep telling myself that once we are cleaned and organized it will be time to start planting!

Wish us luck!

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MY GARAGE ADVENTURE SERIES

• My Garage Adventure – The Before - Part 1
• My Garage Adventure – The Inspection - Part 2

My Garage Adventure

This post is written by Kamie. Kamie works for Calphalon, one of the brands owned by our parent company Newell-Rubbermaid. She heard Jim talking about his garage makeover and was inspired to organize her garage. Well, of course we were more than happy to help her out :)

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With the approach of spring I begin dreaming about one of my favorite activities of the year, picking out and planting annuals and perennials on my patio and around my yard.  I tell you this because my thoughts progress as follows:  what tools do I need to replace, what do I have, oh my gosh, our garage is a wreck!

So as I stand looking around our two car garage, I realize that this room probably reflects our lives and interests more accurately than any other room in our house.  Gardening tools and supplies, fishing equipment, golf clubs, sports equipment, extra supplies, extra refrigerator, various power tools, the 10 foot ladder for the Christmas tree and ride on toys for our two year old.  Whew, that is a lot of stuff in one space.

Here are the three goals I would like to accomplish:

1. My husband is out.  Actually his car is, and I would like to redesign the space now that we plan to only keep one car in the garage.  This will allow us to rethink how to best organize the placement of items based on need and frequency.
2. Hide things.  I would really like to NOT see every bottle, can, tool, and ball out in the open.  It is important to figure out how to utilize boxes, bins and cabinets to make it visually more appealing while keeping like things in close proximity.
3. Keep it up.  Making sure that getting to things doesn’t mean creating a new mess so we have a chance to keep it organized.

Please give me your ideas for making over my garage into a useful and neat space.

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MY GARAGE ADVENTURE SERIES

• My Garage Adventure – The Before - Part 1
• My Garage Adventure – The Inspection - Part 2

Road to Reorganize the Garage (Part 1)

This summer my parents relocated from a small town in southwest Michigan to Charlotte, NC. Their property up north included a 4-car garage.....which was full. Today my parents are living in much smaller house with a 1-car garage. (Eventually they will be moving again, but we are not sure when...) Downsizing from a 4-car to a 1-car garage has been somewhat of a disaster to be honest. The picture describes it better than I ever could...

 

I asked my dad to tell me how he feels about the garage, and this is what he wrote:

………a place for everything and everything in its place!
 
That’s the first thing that comes to mind when I think of this mess we are currently calling a garage. It’s like trying to put 10 pounds of stuff in a 5-pound bag. I’m sure there is a rule in the universe somewhere that says that’s not possible, but maybe they never met Rubbermaid? Maybe there is hope for this poor little one car garage with the help of the FastTrack garage organization system created by Rubbermaid. Maybe this system can put 10 pounds in a 5-pound bag after all. Time will tell.
 
Coming from a mult-stall garage to an extremely small one car garage certainly has its challenges. Even with the minimum amount of what I feel are necessary garage items, this small little area will desperately need the help of an organizational miracle to not cause its owner to go crazy. Items have been piled, pushed and squeezed into this small garage from the whirlwind move down here from Michigan. Since nothing is organized, nothing is easy to find and even the physical act of moving around in the garage is a hazard to one's health.
 
For someone that needs to make sure that the piles of paper on my desk are square and at 90 degree’s to the edge, this garage gives me heartburn every time I look in it...so I try not too!
 
With a little luck and some elbow grease my wife and I hope to transform this area of disaster to one that Rubbermaid would be proud to be a part of.

I know my parents are frustrated with the lack of organization, and I feared that because they know they will be moving again, they would not want to spend the time and energy to revamp their garage. Much to my delight (and surprise) they are very excited to tackle the garage disaster! I know it will be a process, but having an organized and functional garage space will make my parents' life a little bit happier.

My parents have not started to clean or go through the purging process yet, but I told Dad that we have to use the FastTrack system if he wanted help from me! I (we) am looking for any advice, ideas or tips for tackling this sort of downsizing situation. Because my parents will not be in the his house for very long, they are looking to do something quick/inexpensive or (if it more costly) something that can relocate with them to their new house in the future. Please let me know if YOU have any tips from your own garage makeover or any experiences you may have heard about from family or friends. My parents need all the help they can get!
Currently there are old cabinets, golf clubs, motorcycles, lawn mowers, shelves, various car fluids...

 

 
This site had some interesting ideas and inspiring photos of garage organization. Here is what my parents' garage looks like if you open up the back door from the kitchen looking into the garage...HELP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

 

Shedding a/k/a - Organizing the Shed - Part 1

So...we've had this ongoing project of rebuilding our shed and then organizing it for the past few years.  Well, I am excited to say that this is the YEAR!!  We're about to put the finishing touches on the outside and will then be ready to start organizing what's already in the shed and what needs to go from the house into the shed..alas "SHEDDING".

As you can see from the pictures below, we have a lot of stuff to organize.  To make the purging easier, we're going to create piles of keep, give away, and thrash.

So to all of you organized bloggers out there..I'm looking for some new and creative ideas!! Any suggestions you can give to help me organize the stuff in my shed with room for the stuff in the house, would be greatly appreciated!   

 

 

Pre-Garage Sale

We've been really busy with college visits and out-of-town guests, but we’re finally getting organized for our Garage Sale.

My husband and I decided to divide and conquer. He took the garage and miscellaneous shelves/storage areas in the house while I weeded through closets, one by one.

My husband did a good job cleaning up some dusty furniture, file cabinets and sports equipment no longer in use. My daughter definitely had an overstock of baby tees and blouses she could part with. I found a ½ dozen prom and bridesmaid dresses and a full dozen of nice dress slacks my husband hasn’t worn since we got married.

     
 

Combine that with 3 sets of old dishes, 4 sets of matching bedding, a small library of paperback books, a TV, boombox and stereo and I think our driveway is full.

We now have an almost empty closet we can now use for seasonal clothing. 
And remember the teenagers room? Messy room   Look at it now!

 

This is exciting!  We bought in-expensive dot stickers at the office supply store to price everything and bright neon cardboard for signs. I’ll let you know how it goes.

How to Sell Clothing at a Yardsale?

My husband and I combined forces with our friends for a yard sale this fall. We had tons of stuff and quite the variety: home decor, electronics, speakers, tv's, dvd players, purses, shoes and all sorts of other jazz. The first thing we had to do was go through our house to decide what was going to be in the sale. Purging is something that is tough for me because I'm always scared I'm going to get rid of something I will need "someday" (which of course never happens). This time around I did a pretty good job, with the help of my husband encouraging me and reminding me that no, I will never need that bag, or that shirt, or those shoes ever again. One room at a time, we went through the closets, checked under the beds, looked in all of our storage bins, and designated one of our guest rooms as the yard sale room. We started this process in August, so as we found more and more things to sell, we placed them in the yard sale room. One night as the sale got close, we sat down and priced everything. We used masking tape and a red marker, that way we knew what was ours (our friends marked theirs in black marker). Our friends made some signs (below was after the sale, but thought I would show you the signs!), and the day of the sale finally came.

Even though it rained (despite the sunny forecast), we were prepared with canopies to cover most of our selection. The photo below was after the rain let up a bit, and my husband was brave enough to put the speakers out from under the canopy.

 

One thing we had plenty of was clothing, and we weren't really sure the best way to display all of it. We had shirts, sweaters, jackets, jeans, shorts, skirts and even a couple suits and bridesmaids dresses. As you will see from the photo, we gave it our best effort. (This consisted of a rope tied from a tree in the front yard to a hook on the front porch held up in the middle by a ladder. We hung the shirts on the rope, and we had all of the pants and shorts in bins on the ground.) 

 

We put out plastic hangers with our clothes, which was tough to remember to get them back before people walked off with them. I should have looked at more research first. This site had a lot of good tips: http://www.yardsalequeen.com. (This site, for example, suggested using wire hangers or hangers that you don't want back.) I thought I would get some ideas for our next yard sale on our toughest challenge this time around...what is the best way to display clothing items? 

Lance Armstrong's Garage

Just saw a post on Lance Armstrong's garage that desperately needs a Rubbermaid makeover by Jim and I !  I would love to show Lance what FastTrack can do.  Who thinks Rubbermaid has what it takes to help Lance get his garage in order?

FastTrack all over the house

Sadly, I don't have a garage.  But, because they have an additional hole for direct mount into studs in interior walls, I have still found ways to use Rubbermaid FastTrack hooks throughout my house.

Here are a few places the hooks have come in handy for me:

1-Holding mops / stick tools in my laundry room (3 handle S hook)

2- Propping up canvases in my art closet (ladder hooks)

Holding camping chairs in my really little coat closet (hose hook)

Keeping sporting goods off the floor (Multipurpose hook) - this poor tennis racket hasn't seen any court time for quite awhile, so it needs a good resting place!

Rubbermaid FastTrack Garage Organization - Special Offer

THIS OFFER HAS EXPIRED.

With summer starting many of you are probably thinking about getting your garage organized. I have the perfect 'jump start' for the project.

Starting today there is a limited time special offer on the Rubbermaid FastTrack garage organization kits.  This offer is available only on the www.BuyFastTrack.com website.

At only $39.95 per kit you'll be able to quickly and easily get your garage organized.

For those of you who need a little inspiration, check out the five part blog series I did last July on my garage makeover. If I can get organized, so can you.

- Part #1: I've got a BIG problem. My garage is a total mess
- Part #2: Planning is half the battle (or at least some of the battle)
- Part #3: Tackling the installation - One step at a time
- Part #4: My garage is really starting to shape up
- Part #5: I love my garage! I never expected it to turn out this good