Garage Make-Over!!

I've always thought my garage was well organized.  I guess my limited time to do the things I love clouded my vision. The reality was that my garage was more organized than the average person's garage, but it wasn't visibly organized to my standards.  It literally just DAWNED on me out of no where.

So, I put my "Fall Bucket List" to rest, for a week, and tackled the task to make my garage more visibly pleasing to my eyes.

Using bins and baskets to disguise things is the best way, in my opinion, to make things less of an eye sore.  So that's exactly what I did.  I shopped a ton of stores for bins and baskets.  I chose the color black for several reasons.  1. My van is black. 2. The garage refrigerator is black. 3. Black hides dirt.  

I went to these stores:

Lowes

Target

Home Depot

Wal-mart

Big Lots

Bed, Bath, and Beyond

Kmart

The highlighted stores are the stores I selected my bins/baskets from.

Before

After

Before

After

Before

After

Balls

Having boys, we have a ton of balls!

Baseball & Bowling

Bats, Water Guns and Baskets

Pools Toys and Summer Fun Toys

Car Wash Supplies

House Paint

If you look at the "before" photos, you will see that our paints were organized from tallest to smallest, but the rusted paint cans just put a damper on allowing things to look organized.  I transferred all of our paint to mason jars.  It was a ROYAL pain in the booty because I did NOT know that left over paint cannot be put into the county trash can.  SO....

After I organized and labeled each mason jar....

I had to buy kitty litter (no not for the cat I don't own)...

But rather, to solidify the left over paint that I chose NOT to keep.

Once the paint solidifies, thanks to the kitty litter, 
The garbage man will take the empty cans.

The stinky part was that I had already put the open paint cans into 6 large garbage bags. SO, I had to wait for a day I would have time, to reopen the trash bags, and start solidifying the paint with kitty litter.  It was an absolute messy, disaster, but it is OVER with and I am so glad because it looks so much better now.

The finishing touches were the labels.  I found what I wanted at Michael's Art Supply store and my BFF, Ashely, wrote out the labels for me.  I [HEART] her handwriting.  

I LOVE pulling into my garage now.  I feel like I'm driving into my home :) Not a messy, dysfunctional garage.