Shoes, Shelves and Pegboard

This has been a cluttered corner for a long time.  Things go here when they have no place else to go.  Gardening tools, bags of mortar, sawhorses, bicycle pumps, camping chairs, floor steam cleaners.  Hey, it’s what a garage is for, right?

Well, this winter I’m going to be spending a lot of time introducing better storage solutions, cabinetry, drawers, better layout, doing all sorts of things to make the garage work better for us.  In this corner, I’m going to put up some pegboard to help hold the little stuff and keep it easy to access and out of the way.

Yeah, okay, it’s still totally cluttered.  But it’s an organized clutter!  A big part of any organization effort is just getting rid of the crap you don’t use anymore.  That always helps.

Okay, this is a problem that we’ve been tripping over for years.  This little corner by the rusty fridge has stored our shoes, but I’ve always thought this was a wasted space.  So much more can be done with this area.

Yeah, now we’re talking.  A little plywood, some lumber, a few pieces of hardware, and suddenly we have a space to store a dozen pairs of shoes, with a place to sit to put shoes on, and a storage trunk to store whatever you want!

I’m not fond of plywood for making furniture, but this is my garage, not the Earl Gray Tea Room in Buckingham Palace.  Function beats out aesthetics.  All it has to do is work.

I bought 2×8 lumber for the top and the bench, and I dug up the most beaten, moldy and weathered pieces I could find out of the wood pile.  Old wood like that can polish up pretty good.  I like the color, and it’s sturdy as hell.

I went cheap for hardware, but made sure to use solid brass.  It can get a little humid out in the garage.

I’ve had this little clasp for ages, finally found a use for it.  I think it probably wanted to go in a window or something, but here it works great, holding up the lid to the trunk so it doesn’t break your arm.

That’s like 10 cubic feet of storage in there!

Happy shoes.  They all have a home and there’s room to grow.