Well, Spring has certainly sprung around the great Pacific Northwest! The four consecutive days over 80 degrees recently got me thinking less and less about organizing inside the house and more and more about organizing outside the house. Specifically, organizing all the assorted lawn and garden tools and equipment tucked in various places: garage, shed, assorted outside storage nooks and crannies.
As with any organizing project, before we can get down to actual organizing, we need to know exactly what it is that we need to organize.
So, the first thing that needs to be done is to gather all your tools and equipment in the same place, putting “like-with-like.” For example, all the hand trowels need to go together, all the gloves need to be in one area, all the rakes need to be placed together. You get the idea.
Once you’ve placed like-with-like, decide if everything needs to be kept and, therefore, organized. Do you have far more rakes that you could possibly use? Can you donate a few? Are some of the hand trowels bent and rusted and need to be thrown away? Are there mismatched gloves that need to be thrown away? There is no need to plan on organizing things that really don’t need to be kept.
Once all the items are together, think about the space where you plan to keep your tools and accessories.
- Is there an option for hanging a tool rack?
- Do you need a free-standing option?
- Would it help if the storage were mobile?
Once you’ve determined what will be organized and where the organization will take place, the fun part begins! How to corral everything. There are literally hundreds of storage options ranging from a simple nail in the wall to hang a trowel or a bag of gloves, all the way up to systems that cost hundreds and hundreds of dollars.
Here are some options that fall in between:
Wall organizer for large and small tools:
Combination large/small wall organizer:
Everything is easier to do if we can find the tools we need for the job. There are many, many options for whatever you need to organize and wherever you need to organize it. Whatever your choice, the best advice I can give is to just get outside and enjoy this amazing place in which we live!
Note: All organizing tool images: Amazon.com.