If you are a car owner and you own a garage you should be sure to park your car in it. Obviously, your car will be safer but you will get a cheaper insurance premium as it is kept in a locked and secure area.

Your garage is also an area that you could use to store those items that you cannot find a home for inside your house. It could be large garden furniture, bikes, tools, a BBQ, children’s toys, decorating equipment or tables and chairs. There could also be smaller items such as smaller tools, paint pots and car washing equipment.

When you are trying to store a number of items as well as your car you need a suitable storage system. This means you can fit all of your belongings in and keep them organised so that they are easy to find when needed.

If you have larger items to store, there are storage racks that are designed and treated especially to withstand the potentially cold and damp conditions of the garage so that they do not rust or corrode. The shelves that are on the storage racks can be adjusted to heights to suit your requirements.

If you have smaller items then there are single shelves that can be attached to the wall at a suitable height. With the correct fixings they can be hung above the car so that they do not restrict the space that you need to park your vehicle.

When spring arrives, however late, it is a good time to have a look around the garden and the exterior of the house to tackle any repair jobs that might need doing. Garage racks and shelving may also be due for a spot of spring cleaning as well.

In the garden, the fence – quite often a close board fence – may have suffered a battering from the winter weather. Not to worry, they are not usually all that difficult to fix. A single board that has been broken could be replaced. You will need to remove the damaged board first. Lever it out and remove nails that have been pulled out with it. If they prove difficult to remove then hammer them flat with the horizontal triangular rail. Slip a replacement board in, making certain that the overlap is straight, then fix in place.

When metal gates and railings for the fence get rusty, they can start to look a bit shabby. The other problem, of course, is that they will begin to deteriorate. Restoring them is relatively easy. Begin by stripping away loose flakes of paint with sandpaper. You may decide to use a wire brush for this operation, in which case, don’t forget to wear goggles for safety from flying particles.

Dip a cloth in white spirit next and wipe them down before coating them with paint especially formulated to inhibit rust. Usually one coating should be sufficient, but it is always a good idea to check the instructions.

Quite a few garages that carry out repairs on cars or motorbikes will make use of various mobile storage racks. Garage storage areas are usually locked up at night and it is more convenient to be able to simply wheel the rack holding the various tools and other equipment needed through the course of a day, into the work area.

During the working day, tools and equipment can be wheeled in one go to any area of the garage where they might be needed. There are many different types of racks available, but in a garage environment, which will be busy and physically demanding, the storage racks must fulfil several essential criteria to comply with health and safety regulations, these include;
• Must be constructed from hard-wearing materials such as steel
• Must have a secure locking system for its wheels when not being moved around the garage
• The storage rack that has been bought must be suitable for the task it is meant to perform
• The rack should be well constructed. A cheaply made rack is not necessarily of poor quality but if it has a flaw then this might not become apparent until an accident occurs

Archive racks are also found to be quite useful for the storage of small items such as bolts, nuts and screws. Clipboards and box files may also be kept here in easy reach so that a mechanic can quickly consult a worksheet if he needs to do so in order to check a repair job or MOT test requirement.

In the garage, it is sometimes a good idea to install storage racks for aerosol cans. It will mean that you are able to organise your various cans of spray paint, oil and so forth, and be able to find them easily. You might want to build one yourself or simply buy one. Either way, mounting the storage racks onto the garage wall above workbenches, for example, will keep the cans in one place.

Now, where you place these garage racks is quite important. You should be careful about allowing direct light onto them. Therefore if your garage has a window, try to attach the rack to the garage wall where light will not fall onto them. When the can are empty, please dispose of them responsibly.

Storage racks in the kitchen are useful in quite a few ways. A spice rack will be the ideal place to store your various jars of herbs and spices. The added bonus is that they can be quickly examined to check if you are running low on your supply. Some racks will even hang on the inside of a kitchen cupboard door.

Sharp kitchen knives should be stored in a safe place, where they are easy to locate. They must not be hidden from immediate view in a drawer under other objects or left lying around on kitchen work surfaces, especially when there are children in the home. Magnetic or wooden knife racking is useful and easily mounted on the wall.

If you find it necessary to create another room, a workshop perhaps or even a music or artist’s studio, you could do worse than consider the garage and its storage potential as a possibility. However there will be several things to bear in mind depending on what kind of activity you are planning for the converted space.

For instance, if you have your heart set on making room for a workshop, then it should not be too complicated or indeed expensive to create a good, functional working area that will be ideal for whatever projects you have in mind. The installation of storage cabinets and storage racks to accommodate your tools will not be too difficult. Similarly, installing a worktable will be no great task. If the allocated space is quite small, then folding workbenches that can be hung on the wall or stored in a corner might be a better idea.

However, the conversion of your garage into a studio, living area or office is a more serious matter and will entail a lot more money and work. Take for example, a music studio. There are several factors to consider with this particular project and one of the major factors is noise. If the garage is connected to the house, you may have a problem with the fact that the sounds being produced in the studio will reverberate through the structure, and you will be listening to your teenagers rehearsing no matter what room you are in. Rewiring and insulation will also have to be taken into account.

The vast majority of homes in the UK come with built-in garages, and whilst these extensions to our homes were designed to store cars and other vehicles, they are often more useful for the average homeowner as a storage space for all manner of items.

From tool kits and workbenches to seasonal games and garden furniture, garages can easily and quickly become full of clutter. Finding anything in this building can be a task in itself, which is why it pays to have some sort of organisational system in place.

One of the most effective and simple storage solutions available is shelving. Expense for storage shelves is often minimal, and they are available in a range of different materials to ensure that however heavy the item, there are durable shelves to suit.

Plastic shelves are the cheapest option, and are ideal for storing lightweight items. Metal shelves, on the other hand, are more suitable if the garage is being used primarily to store heavy tools, as they won’t bend or break like plastic shelves as they are more hard-wearing.

Shelves are ideal storage solutions in any area of the home, as they can be easily installed and fixed onto walls, thus optimising the space available in even the smallest of rooms. This makes it much easier for certain rooms to be organised, and makes good use of floor space.

Keeping track of certain items and ensuring ease of use is also a benefit to be gained from something as simple as shelves, as they will help the user to save time looking through endless clutter to actually fidn what they are looking for.

If you have decided to build your own wooden shelving system for the garage and decided where to locate it, your next task is to make sure you have all the necessary tools for the job before you start. Tape measure, hammer and nails, a spirit level, clamps, sand-paper, set square, a mitre saw and enough wood. You may wish to consider wood preservative and stain or varnish as well, but these can be looked at afterwards.

Begin by building the shelving system frame, cut two vertical posts to the required size. Now cut eight pieces that are a third of the length of the vertical posts. Next cut eight pieces, two thirds of the length of the vertical posts. Find the studs on the garage wall. Affix four of the two-thirds length pieces to these studs and space the, cut pieces out so that they are approximately 18 inches apart, not forgetting to use the spirit level to make sure they are horizontal.

Now construct two half ladders, one ladder should comprise of the vertical post and fix four pieces of timber that are a third of the vertical post’s length. These are the frames that go on either side. Then affix the half ladders to either side of the four pieces you previously attached to the wall. Clamp them then nail them together. Fix together the remaining four pieces of two-thirds length wood. Finally, cut shelves and nail them to each shelving frame. When finished, coat the shelving system with wood preservative.

A small commercial garage, especially in these tough economic times, is a very difficult enterprise to run successfully. There are several factors key to the survival of a business such as this.

The quality of service is important. The word of mouth factor is a powerful aspect and information about a good repair job that is reasonably priced will soon spread around the local area. MOT tests are a fact of life that have been with us for a good many years now and small garages benefit from offering their expertise in making sure a vehicle is roadworthy and if there are any repairs or fine tunings needed to offer these as well.

In order to keep up to date with the plethora of paperwork, from receipts for sales to invoices for items purchased, an efficient storage system is vital. The average small garage will probably have an office with a personal computer using a variety of software packages to keep on top of the stock-ordering, accounts’ balancing and word-processing tasks needed. Effective document storage and file storage should be ensured both as hard copy and stored electronically on removable media as well as the computer’s hard-drive.

The garage shelving and storage shelves should be robust and hard-wearing to cope with the rigours of their environment. Mechanics’ tools, engine parts and so on will be stored here. If possible, it would be advisable to store these expensive items in a lockable area of the garage.  A cage with a heavy-duty padlock is one idea.