Forget about parking your car there – for many homeowners, the garage is the go-to place for parking clutter. Luckily, home organisation experts Karen Francis and Alison Wildon from LifeWorks are here to help you clear through the chaos and create a more useable space

Herts Advertiser: LifeWorks: Karen Francis, left, and Alison WildonLifeWorks: Karen Francis, left, and Alison Wildon (Image: Archant)

If you are lucky enough to own a garage, you may well be considering converting it into some more living space for your home or giving it a long overdue tidy and some much needed TLC.

Either way, spring is the perfect season to reorganise your garage space, as it is generally now warm enough to spend time in there getting everything organised and checked over ahead of the summer season. If you are even luckier and have garden space to empty it all into, even better, as this will allow you the extra space to thoroughly go through all the stored items.

Often when we declutter our homes, we simply move many of the items to places where we can no longer see them and a loft space or garage are classic dumping grounds for the things you can’t decide what to do with. As internationally-renowed decluttering expert Barbara Hemphill is quoted as saying: “clutter is nothing more than postponed decisions”.

Therefore, an annual clear-out of these ‘clutter hotspots’ is a great idea, particularly as the summer approaches and gardening tools, furniture, bikes and paddling pools are likely to need unearthing after their long winter rest!

If you really declutter your garage, some of those outgrown or no longer loved items could be perfect to take to a car boot or table top sale and may even earn you a bit of extra cash!

If you are looking to renovate your garage to generate more space within your home, you are going to need to be ruthless about what you can keep.

Will you be retaining any storage space, or are you planning on using a garden shed or lock box? There are so many brilliant shelving and storage solutions to cater for almost every requirement, it’s just a case of working out exactly what your needs are and are going to be.

Take a look at exactly what is in your garage and address the following issues:

• How do you want the space to work for you?

• What really needs to be in there?

• How can you zone your garage by item or season?

• What storage solutions might you require?

After you’ve worked out what you want to get rid of, it’s time to categorise it to one of the following groups:

• Local recycling centre

• Charity shop/give away

• Online selling (eBay/Facebook, etc.)

• Car boot or table top selling

The next job is to actually remove the items as planned above. If things don’t sell, give them away – you have already decided you don’t want them, so make the break!

If you would like some help with your garage project, LifeWorks offer a free one-hour consultation: see www.lifeworks.space for more information.