Organizing the Garage

So I have this garage and I had a plan. Then I promptly blew it by not following the plan. The result was a cluttered filthy mess that slowly became unusable.

My recommendation? Make a plan and then stick to it. I'm not saying to never change the plan, but make the plan and follow the plan.

The first item on my plan was to decide what I wanted to use the garage for.

My list looked like this:

Garage Intended Use List

1. Store my motorcycle collection.
2. Space to store my tools and equipment.
3. Space to work on my motorcycles.
4. Space to do basic woodworking.
5. Space to do basic metal working.
6. Space to work on miscellaneous projects.
7. Space to store my bicycles.
8. Space to store house paint and miscellaneous stuff.
9. Space to store vehicle fluids, solvents and cleaners.

Yours might be greatly different, like kids stuff, garden tools, cars, and so on.

I then had to decide where everything went. In order to do this I had to figure out what equipment I had, the kind of storage I had, the general layout of the garage and so on.

Garage Infrastructure List

   This is stuff about the garage that may affect the layout and the use of the garage. It includes things that can't be moved without lots of grief and or cost.

1. A 26'x28' garage with 10 foot ceilings.
2. There's a 16 foot main door and a 3 foot side door in the front of the garage. This gives 16 feet of parking space behind the main door and 10 feet of floor space to line up equipment on the right and around a foot or so of space between the main door and the west wall for shelving.
3. The garage is fully insulated and has a garage heater mounted to the ceiling.
4. There's three banks of florescent overhead lights. I also had 5 large windows built into the garage.
5. There are three 20 amp circuits, one in the west wall, north wall, and one that serves the east and south walls. There's also two 230 volt, 30 Amp circuits.
6. I have an 80 gallon 5HP air compressor already bolted down in the back left corner of the garage. The air system has two circuits, the first is dried, filtered, and regulated. the second is dried, oiled and separately regulated.  Both circuits have hose reels mounted near the air compressor along with fixed lines running the length of the back of the garage.
7. I have two sheets of pegboard already mounted on the back wall of the garage.
8. The floor is relatively flat and mostly painted with a cheap epoxy paint. The floor outside of the remaining painting doesn't need any repairs.

Garage Stuff List

This is stuff that will go in the garage and can be moved around

1. My motorcycle collection
2. Two bicycles
3. Enough equipment to line the east and north walls, plus a double row of equipment between the side door and the main door going front to back.(This could be a couple of pages of stuff so I shortened the list)

Garage Layout Plan
I already had a general idea of the layout I had in mind, so:

1. Motorcycles will sit in the central space behind the main door.
2. The west wall will have bookcases for storage as there is only about a foot between the door edge and the wall. I eventually included a folding table to store household items.
3. Paint, large motorcycle parts and chicken feed will store near the air compressor in the corner.
4. A row of equipment will sit across the back wall of the garage and will primarily be items that sit low to allow access to the pegboard on the wall above it.
5. Another row of equipment will sit along the east wall. These items will be either tall or heavy with fill in to take advantage of wall space or window access as needed.
6. A double row of the remaining equipment will go in the remaining space between the main and side doors. This creates a long aisle way from the side door to the back of the shop which then makes a left to follow the back wall. I learned from previous layouts that little used aisles tend to become storage and I wanted to discourage the temptation to do it again.
7. Aisles should be 30 inches or more where possible in order to move equipment around as needed and allow safe use of power equipment.

So I proceed to set up the garage according to the current plan.

 The pegboard

 The air compressor area

 The back aisleway

 The back row of bikes

 The bookcase storage

The other compressor and blasting cabinet

 The dust collector, hydraulic press, and one of the work tables

 Household stuff storage

 The back aisle and three of the bikes in the front row.

 Another view of the black worktable

 Akro bin storage and work table

 The primary project bench

 The main tool chest, solvent and fluid shelf, and wire spool box

 A view from the side door

Looking back toward the side door

The whole project took the better part of three months. I hope to never have to make this kind of adjustment to my man cave ever again. I do plan to tweak the layout to improve storage and the general efficiency of the garage, but this will be one thing at a time.