Because of the many roles it plays in our lives – restaurant, convention center, home office, study hall – the kitchen has long held the title of hardest-working room in the house. But that’s true only if you don’t count the garage. Granted, we don’t ordinarily live in the garage, but, attached or not, a garage is still a critical part of our domestic environment.
Like a kitchen, a garage is a multipurpose space, if only by default. Although intended for a car, it is also workshop, auto-repair bay and garden shed. It is often a toy box, and for some very big toys – motorbikes, snowmobiles, canoes and jet-skis, just to name a few.
Millions of Americans who have vacated the garage altogether and now park their SUVs in the driveway can easily identify with that scenario. Most of them will resolve every spring and summer to get the garage cleaned out once and for all. Few will succeed.
Part of the problem, of course, is that unlike the other hardest-working room, there is nowhere to put anything. While kitchens are meticulously designed and equipped to store a multitude of things, most garages are designed to store only one: a car.
Simply a nail to hang the rake on and another for the snow shovel won’t do. Neither, if you’re going to get serious about it, will peg board for the screwdrivers or flimsy utility shelving.
To exploit a garage’s potential for storage and performance – and it is vast – you have to get serious. You have to recognize that the garage is premium real estate. Done right – that is, intentionally, deliberately, consciously and carefully – a garage can actually improve the quality of your life. Even if that only means you can lay your hands on the needle-nose pliers each and every time you need them.
But for a garage to actually earn its hardest-working-room-in-the-house title, it needs to be approached like its chief competitor, the kitchen. It has to be thoughtfully designed to accommodate “appliances,” such as a table saw or drill press. It definitely needs storage, in the form of cabinets or, at the very least, good sturdy shelves. And it needs work surfaces.
All of which are readily available at your nearest home center. Off-the-shelf kitchen cabinets, even the cheapest among them, are ideal for use in garages. For under $1,500 you could line the entire back wall of the garage with cabinets and countertops. Not to mention all manner of pull-out bins, door racks and drawer dividers to keep you organized.
Sauder Woodworking Co., a major manufacturer of ready-to-assemble furniture, has just unveiled a line of garage furnishings, including tall cabinets with doors, mobile carts, stackable cubes, workbenches and tables. Rubbermaid and other companies are making storage cabinets and chests suitable for garage use.
Designed specifically for the garage or recruited (or recycled) from the cooking zone, kitchen-style cabinets make sense because they hug the walls and make the most of a garage’s vertical space. Like mobile kitchen islands or serving carts, tables, benches and tool chests with wheels can be stored under countertops when not in use, then rolled out for tinkering.
For a garage with an attic, even a shallow one, a pulldown ladder in the ceiling can provide easy access to orphaned overhead space where outdoor holiday lights and seasonal sports equipment can be stored.
Another way to find more storage space in the garage is to create storage space outside of it. A separate prefabricated outbuilding – a garden shed, for example – could get the riding mower, shovels, rakes, hoes, flower pots and bags of mulch and fertilizer out of the garage.
Finally, keep in mind the major rationale for furnishing and outfitting a garage is not to make places to put things. It’s to replace chaos with order, to create convenience, to give you time to spend doing things you enjoy rather than looking for things that always seem to be misplaced. If something as simple as a cabinet or shelves with labeled boxes simplifies your life and makes routine chores easier, then what are you waiting for?
Just don’t forget to leave room for the car.
