Walt Dollard talks with a tone of amused guilt when he recounts the ever-growing collection of, well, stuff that had taken up residence in his garage.
"Junk had accumulated," the Churchill man says, his voice turning serious. "Tools had accumulated. The garage looked ... pretty lousy."
He got caught up in straightening out his garage, and it turned into a $16,000 project.
That might be a costly solution, but his desire to cure the dilemma made him part of a growing group of homeowners who are tired of trying to find those golf clubs that used to be ... uh, over there. Or the people who now own three shovels because the first two are under the rubble. Or the people who have $50,000 in automobiles buried under the snow because they have nowhere to put them.
They are locked out and tired of it.
Save that space
Garage rescue -- all right, organization sounds better -- gets bigger as the piles of unnecessary goods get higher. A 2003 Harris Poll reports 50 percent of homeowners believe the garage is the messiest place in the home.
"Clutter in general is growing," says Leslie McKee of Mt. Lebanon's McKee Organizing Services. "We have less time, but more money and more stuff."
When household goods are replaced or abandoned, many people don't throw them away, says organizer Patty Kreamer of Green Tree's Kreamer Connects. The stuff is saved, many times for bad reasons, and end up in the garage.
"The garage is the last step before the trash," she says. "That makes cleanup easy, because people have lost touch with what's there. But that also means there is a lot there to clean up."
There is another problem, too.
"Garages are the last room people want to deal with," says Greg Heibert, co-owner of Millvale's Garage Beyond, which installs wall-mounted organization systems.
Garages have become more than just big rectangles in the bottom of our homes.
Gladiator Garageworks, a line of organization equipment owned by Whirlpool Corp., has outlets in 5,000 stores nationwide, says its national sales manager, Randy Voss. That line of goods is three years old.
The garage organization industry has gone from $100 million a year in 2002 to $700 million today, according to an Atlanta consulting firm.
The U.S. Department of Energy says 25 percent of people with two-car garages can't get either of the vehicles in there.
Barry Iszak, president of the board of the National Association of Professional Organizers, has written a book published earlier this year on the subject: "Organize Your Garage in No Time" (Que Publishing, $16.95).
Organized thinking
Household organizers say the parade to the garage is getting ever longer.
Nancy Scott, of Mt. Lebanon's Your Personal Organizer, thinks it's because the garage is an easy drop-off point. Connie Fortune, from Fortunately Organized in Indiana Township, believes garages are culprits because "they are out of sight."
Maggie Vibonese, of Peters, Washington County, recently brought in Scott to help her clean up a garage that no longer allowed space for a car.
"It just became such a handy spot for putting things," she says. "We've known we've had to do something for about three years."
Garages get to be such a logical home for clutter, residents "don't even see it anymore -- even when something falls on them," says Kreamer, of Green Tree.
Typical garage jobs will cost $300 to $500, not counting any expense for shelving or containers, organizers say. Their efforts are built around creating logical, organized ways of dealing with the space and what it holds.
For most of them, that means not buying any shelves, bins or containers until items have been sorted.
"You can have a whole garage full of containers, and if people don't throw things out, you'll just have stuff sitting on containers," Ross says.
Picking it up off the ground
Dollard says he and his wife, Joan, were more caught up in the goal of neatness than dismayed at its possible cost when they got into their garage project.
"We were more concerned with getting it done right," he says about the job that began with an $8,000 reconstruction of the floor. The new concrete bottom and smooth, water-repellent top laid the base for work that was to follow.
He then went to Garage Beyond, a two-year-old company in Millvale that installs "slat-wall" systems. They create walls that hold racks, cabinets, hooks and other devices hung from the slats.
The weeklong installation cost about another $8,000, he says, and placed slat-walls all over the three walls of the garage and even on a 6-foot-wide space between the two doors.
Slat-wall solutions are similar to peg-board approaches that lift clutter off the floor and provide organized space. Besides Garage Beyond, such systems can be found in retail outlets, sometimes connected with lines such as Whirlpool's Gladiator.
Garage Beyond is sold and installed through dealers to ensure the validity of warranties, while Gladiator is aimed at contractors and do-it-yourselfers and is sold at retail stores.
Installation of a Garage Beyond system would cost about $2,000 for a typical garage that is 22 feet wide with a 7- or 8-foot-high ceiling, Heibert says. A Gladiator package for roughly the same area would cost about $900, company material points out, but includes no installation.
Organizers also point out there are "cheap solutions" such as industrial shelving and bins that do the trick.
Solving the garage problem can be costly, but one organizer thinks the spending amortizes itself over the years.
"If you do something that lasts you the next 20 years, it's worth it," Scott says.
Cleaning up your act
Ways to get and keep the garage in order:
The big definition:Patty Kreamer, of Green Tree, says the first thing a homeowner has to do is define what he or she want a garage to be. It can be the storage space for the cars, but it also could be a hobby area or workout room. "Allow only stuff into that space that belongs there," she says.
The big difference:Separate children's items from those of adults, says Mt. Lebanon's Nancy Scott. That creates logical, organized areas and keeps potentially dangerous items such as chemicals and paints away from children.
On the go:Brookline's Jill Revitsky urges the creation of a "go" zone as a takeoff runway for things to be taken somewhere. Items being donated, DVDs being returned, tools going the hardware shop for repair would all be deposited there, and residents heading out would get into the habit of checking -- and taking -- items. "On Saturday, chore day, I'll just take the whole box in case I get near where I need to be," Revitsky says.
The vertical solution:Use shelves to create vertical storage space, says Murrysville's Amy Ross. "The walls and the space above things on the floor are great unused areas for storing things," she says.
Stay neat elsewhere, too.The garage is not going to stay neat for long if the rest of the house is messy, says Greensburg's Jody Adams. That will just put items on the road to the garage. "Most often, a messy garage reflects what's going on in the rest of the house," she says.
-- Bob Karlovits
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