Organized Again

Do you remember that good feeling of spending time organizing a closet, a basement, a shed, or a garage?  You threw out what was broken, dirty, unneeded, or just unwanted, and what was left you put in its place so you could find everything you sought.  What a great feeling!  Then about a year later, you opened that closet door or looked in that garage and through, "What happened?" as everything somehow morphed into a tangled, heaped-up mess.

Blue tape marks the layout for the components
we needed to expand our elfa shelves.

Rick and I have been waiting for January because that is when The Container Store in Tampa has their 30% off sale on elfa shelving.  We have used elfa in the past to organize our closets in the bedrooms, and we started a set of elfa shelves last year in the garage.  Of course, one can never have too much storage, so we waited for this sale to add on to our storage capacity in the garage.

The components were easy to hang.

We actually did not have to buy much because elfa is designed to connect, so we were able to connect the new shelving system by using some of the components of the old system.  We actually added two 48 inch shelves and four 24 inch shelves to one wall.  We added hooks to hold our bike helmets, and purchased more clear boxes (actually men's shoe boxes) to hold all of the items we want to store on the shelves.

We hung the bike helmets, put work shoes in boxes, reorganized
the "extra" wood, stored the lawn blower, and actually have empty
boxes and spaces available.

We bought a hook to hang the lawn blower but decided that we did not like how it fit after we brought that home.  The lawn blower does fit nicely, however, on the top shelf.  We'll take the other hook back to get a refund.  The Container Store is excellent about taking components back.

We ordered the components yesterday online.  We set up a "pick-up" time for today at 12:30, but Rick received a text about 9:30 this morning that our order was packed and ready to be picked up.  Great! I would rather drive to Tampa at 9:30 in the morning (after the rush hour) rather than during the noon-time traffic.  We were home by 11:30. We took time out for lunch and still had the whole system up and organized by 1:30 p.m.

The opposite wall holds the other necessary
garage tools.

We purchased a couple of smaller hooks yesterday at Home Depot to hang a small step stool and a clothes drying rack,  so by moving our broom hanger to the opposite wall, we now have everything hung to the side and ready to use.

This full view picture shows both our new shelves and the
elfa workbench that we added to the garage last year.

In fact, we actually have room to spare on our shelves!  I know that will not last long, but we are going to enjoy it for as long as we can.  I love the feeling of being organized.