Garage Organization - Easy Garage Shelving

Low on space, but high on “stuff” – try this easy garage shelving to increase your storage capacity and organize your space.

My garage is my workshop.

When I say “my” garage I mean the half of our two-car garage that I’ve filled with tools, wood, furniture, and paint.

The other half is “his garage” – the half that he parks his car in.

As much as I try to push the boundaries and spread my stuff across the line (the seam in the concrete that we use as our his/hers marker) – every night he shoves it all back and brings his car in.

And he’s less than impressed with all the sawdust and paint overspray that finds its way over to his side – only when the car isn’t in there, I promise.

I needed to come up with a solution for this:

This mish-mash of open shelving that is more of an eyesore than an effective storage solution.

There’s a lot of vertical space going unused here and the floor space certainly isn’t used to the best of its ability.

Enter my bestest gal-pal (except she doesn’t know it) Ana White and her super-easy garage shelving plans – made entirely with 2×4’s.

I did have to alter Ana’s plans somewhat; I needed 15′ of shelving where her plans are for 20′ and the depth of my shelves had to fit within a 18″ space between the wall and garage door rail.

I started per Ana’s plans, adjusting my cross supports to 11 ½”.

You’re looking at $163 worth of wood (and screws, not photographed) and this was enough to make my entire garage shelving unit – 15′ by 6′ high.

That’s a LOT of storage for a very small price.

Per Ana’s plans, I built three of these leg sections and threaded the shelf boards across the top.

As much as I love the look of garage shelving with coordinated bins adorning the shelves – I needed these bad boys to hold a bit more than just Christmas lights, so I built each garage shelving section separately and according to what I planned to store there.

We needed space for the recycling bins, the jeep windows (in the black bag) and Hubby’s hockey and snowboarding gear;

I knew I needed to keep Hubby’s beer fridge in the layout somewhere;

and that left the last garage shelving section for the bins that store everything he does not want sawdust on;

Okay, I bought a few matching bins to appease the OCD in me.

After learning how to use my impact driver (the wrong way it seems)

and an afternoon of work, I completed my garage shelving project:

Let me tell you the great things about this:

My grand total was $163 for 15′ of garage shelving
it took a total of about 4 hours to build this (all by myself)
(pretty sure I burned about a million calories given the soreness of my muscles afterwards)
that the shelving is not on the floor because it means I can blow out any sawdust that might accumulate and….
I can cover it with plastic sheeting and use it as a paint spray backdrop!

With Ana’s garage shelving we easily have twice the amount stored in the same footprint, it is much less of an eyesore, and Hubby’s happy that his things are dust and spray free!

It didn’t really solve the problem of the stuff on my side of the line – but with paint sprayer space (and protection) I can get the other projects whipped out that much faster!

Thank you Ana White!