How to clear the garage floor in a weekend

Why the floor fills up, and why a weekend is enough

A garage floor fills up because it is the only place in the house where things can be put down without a decision. The floor is free, nothing on it needs a fixing, and everything that has no home leans against the thing that arrived before it. The fix is the same one every garage project comes down to: the floor is the scarce resource, the walls are the free one, and the job is to move things from the first to the second and make it stick.

A weekend is enough for a single garage that has never been done, on one condition: everything you need is in the garage before Saturday morning. The hooks, the shelving, the fixings for your actual wall, a drill that will go into that wall, bin bags, and a booked slot at the tip if yours needs one. Every weekend that fails, fails on a Saturday afternoon spent finding out the plugs are wrong.

The week before

Find out what the walls are made of by looking, not guessing. Bare brick or block is easy to read; a plastered or boarded wall wants a small test hole somewhere low and out of sight. Solid brick takes frame fixings, breeze or thermalite block wants anchors made for lightweight block, and plasterboard on dabs has a void behind it so the fixing has to reach the masonry or a batten has to bridge the studs. Buy for the wall you have. A hook is only as strong as what it is screwed to.

Decide what is allowed to go back on the floor before anything comes off it, because the decision is easier on paper than with the thing in your hand. The test that works: does it have wheels or legs? A mower, a freezer and a shelving unit do. A bike, a ladder, a hose, a box of screws and a can of paint do not, and each of those has a wall home waiting for it in the table below.

Saturday: empty, sort, decide

Everything comes out onto the drive, and everything means everything, because a floor that is cleared around the things that stayed is a floor that fills again in a month. Three piles as it comes out: keep, get rid of, and belongs to someone else. Be honest about the second pile in daylight with the neighbours watching; that is the only time it gets decided. The empty garage gets swept, and while it is empty and swept, it gets checked.

The check is the damp one. Tape a square of polythene to the slab and leave it until Sunday morning; look at the walls for dark patches and white salts. If the slab or a wall is wet, that changes what goes against it and whether the floor gets covered, and it is far better learned now than after the shelving is loaded. Saturday afternoon is the tip run and the measuring: the wall runs, the door swing, the socket, and where each thing on the table is going.

1. 1Empty it, all of itMost of a morning for a single garage. Everything to the drive in three piles: keep, go, and someone else's. Nothing stays inside because it is heavy; heavy is what the shelving is for.
2. 2Sweep and checkSweep the slab, tape polythene down for the damp test, and look at the walls. Half an hour, and it decides what can stand against which wall.
3. 3Tip run and measureTake the go pile while you still have the will. Then measure: each wall run, where the car door opens to, where the up-and-over door reaches, and the socket. Mark the wall with tape where each rack and hook goes. The rest of the afternoon.

Sunday: the wall first, then the floor

The wall goes up before anything goes down, because drilling masonry drops dust and grit over everything below and a rack corner or a fixing will fall at some point. Hooks and racks first, into the marks made on Saturday, with the heaviest and highest things first while you are fresh. Then the shelving unit built and stood against its wall. Only then is the floor swept a second time and, if it is getting tiles, tiled.

Putting things back is the part that goes fast if the table was honest and slowly if it was not. Bikes up, ladder up, hose on its hook, the tins on the shelf, the screws sorted into their bins on the wall — that last one takes longer than it looks and is the job that pays best, because a wall of sorted bins is the difference between fetching and rummaging for years. What is left on the floor at the end has wheels or legs, or it goes on the wall next weekend.

1. 1Hooks and racksInto the tape marks, heaviest and highest first. Frame fixings into brick, block anchors into lightweight block, battens across studs on a boarded wall. A morning for a single garage with the layout already marked.
2. 2ShelvingA boltless unit goes together with a mallet and stands against the wall without a fixing. Build it where it will live; it does not go through a door assembled. Check it stands true on a slab with a fall to the door and pack a foot if it rocks.
3. 3Floor lastSweep again. Tiles click together over the slab in an afternoon and take the car the same day; a coating needs the room empty until it cures, which is another weekend.
4. 4Put back only what belongsWall things to the wall, shelf things to the shelf, and the floor keeps what has wheels or legs. Whatever has no home yet goes in one corner with a date on it.

Making it stay cleared

A cleared garage lasts as long as every new thing gets a home the week it arrives. That is not discipline, it is spare capacity: leave hooks empty, leave a shelf empty, leave a run of gridwall or bin slots unfilled on Sunday night, so that the next thing has somewhere to go that is not the floor. A wall that is full on day one is a floor that is full by spring.

The other habit is the corner. One corner, one box, for things with no home yet, checked once a month. Anything still in it after a month either gets a hook or goes. It sounds small; it is the whole difference between a garage that was cleared once and one that stays cleared. Everything else in this guide is a weekend; this is the bit that lasts.