Neighbourhood garages are swamped with clutter while expensive cars are parked in the driveway or on the street. What a waste of a beautiful and valuable space not to mention the stress and frustration when you want to find a tool, sports equipment or your favourite Christmas ornament. And if you decide to sell your house your garage becomes an important space for the people looking to buy your house. If you are thinking of making it easier for you and your family to find things you want, and need, now is time to start.

• Throw away garbage: broken furniture, tools and toys. Get rid of broken appliances, they are not worth fixing, recycle broken TVs, VCRs and computers; read the GVRD's: 101 Things To Do With Your Old Stuff (you can find a link for it here) for more ideas.

• Organize for junk removal, donations and schedule enough manpower to get the job done, include your children in this project.

• Decide what kind of storage you are going to use. Keep in mind Craig's List - Vancouver, Surrey Reuses or Buy & Sell where people sell all styles of cabinets, furniture and tools

• Think about what you are storing in your garage, perhaps you could use a small shed to store your lawn mower and wheelbarrow.

• Keep in mind that your goal is to park your car in the garage; after all, that's why garages were invented.

• Go to www.onwallsolutions.com for ideas on wall storage.

For more tips go to our website www.solutionsorganizing.com

Don't try to tackle your garage all by yourself, hire a professional or ask your friends to help you. Schedule a (sunny) weekend; sunny because you will have to pull things out to get them organized, a weekend because you want to be able to sort and purge without having piles of stuff for long periods of time.

Once you've set the weekend and the people, grab some paper and draw your garage floor shape. Partition off where you want to store the items you are keeping. Form a vision in your mind of the completed project and how nice it will look.

Remember: the best way to keep your garage organized is to always put away the items you pull out, and don't use it as a dumping ground. One "oh, I'll just put this here for now" quickly leads to 10 items that now need sorting and purging (ie WORK!). Save yourself time, energy and money by taking the extra seconds to put something away; if it doesn't have a home, make a home for it or give it to someone who can make a home for it.