In the past 18 months I know a lot of us have had to change our plans. In California we have been especially hit hard in our home values. Instead of moving into a larger house we have had to make due with the smaller home that we have. Lacking a purchaser for our home, we can't even think about purchasing another one.



If your family is like mine you could need some more storage space in your home. Unless you add on and complete a major remodel, which doesn't make much sense given the condition of the home market and the current economic conditions, we decided to add organizers to our closets. This would give us more storage space in each closet by about 50%. We had already installed them in 2 of our bedrooms, now we would install them in the other two bedrooms.

We determined we needed to install a closet organizer in our other two bedrooms. By doing this we are gaining us as much extra space as if we had built an extra closet. However, in spite of the extra storage space we were still coming up short. We had to go to phase "2" of our scheme.

We could only fit one car in our 2 car garage and it was quite chaotic. We knew we needed to not only organize the space, but to throw away all the items we really didn't need. We could remove things out of the inside and into the garage if we had organized storage space for it all.

Our tactic was to transform the inside of our garage by putting cabinets on the walls and adding a workbench. Included in or plan was to utilize some of the garage wall to hang over sized items such as bikes from hooks. We also needed to relocate our gardening equipment to an outside storage shed we had constructed. This allowed us much more floor space in our garage.

We portioned up the garage wall space to take care of our storage needs. About 70 percent of the usable wall space was utilized for storage racks and cabinets with the remainder being used for hanging items. On the other thirty percent wall panels were put up with a hook system to get the larger bulkier pieces up off the floor. This planning helped us to achieve better space utilization.

Garage organizers are much easier to install than closet organizers. The toughest part is to get the proper layout of the storage units you can get them ordered. The installation itself is just a matter of following your layout plan. For the wall panels and cabinets you will need a stud finder, level, screws and electric drill/screwdriver to finish the project.

If you invest some time, a little effort and a little cash,a little money, you most likely can solve your storage difficulties. You can organize the interior of your home and then after that organize your garage. Or you can do it in reverse order. Do it either way it will give you some more space than you possibly could have ever imagined. Storage problems can be problematic for some families. Solving our storage problems will give us more time to wait out the current financial financial limitations and take advantage at the appropriate time to buy a larger home.

If you're having a problem with storage space you can solve it easily and quickly by doing it yourself. It's surprisingly easy to do, won't take that much time and is even fun to do.