I cannot even believe I’m going to share these pictures with you but for the sake of showing you how badly we needed a storage solution, here goes. Just like ripping off a band-aid.

Welcome to the jungle (made up of junk, half finished projects, tools, seasonal decor, landscaping tools, more junk, and some other crap):

That’s not even the worst part. Ready? Are you sure?  The worst part is that it used to be so much worse. I KNOW. It’s awful. And it’s been this way pretty much since we moved in last Spring. Organization was not a priority for us in 2013, obviously. That’s all changing; 2014 will be the year of organization! The garage is the first of the large beasts to be tamed but don’t worry, we still have plenty to take care of inside – embarrassingly messy photos included.

I decided on or soon before New Year’s Eve that as of January 1, we would finally be able to park in the garage for the first time. We got halfway there before we realized that we couldn’t actually deal with the other half. Why? Oh, nothing big only we didn’t have anywhere to put anything at all. Womp, womp. So the deal was the I would start parking in the garage (Hallelujah!) and we would build a storage system over the weekend.

Enter: DIY garage shelves.

Okay, so they aren’t very pretty but dang they’re functional. I’ll give you guys the rundown on these soon but I figured it would be better to put them in their own post. They weren’t too difficult to build – the worst part was the crappy drill bit we had and the inevitable measure 40 times, cut 97 times when we got ready to install the plywood.

Not only were the shelves totally necessary but it meant I would get to try out our new baby aka my favorite tool ever: the mitre saw.

As soon as we had them secured to the wall, I started loading them up while Kyle worked on the other organization project we had going on which I hope to share next week!

Once the shelving unit is finished and loaded up, we were able to get the garage cleaned up enough to park both of our cars in there. It’s a 2014 miracle!

We’re not done with the garage by a long shot – there’s still plenty to clean around the edges and we have materials for our next big project lurking about but it’s one heck of an improvement over what it was.

I’ll be posting a tutorial for the shelves later in the week and then I’ll finally be sharing our dining room table! We stained it over the weekend but we’re waiting a couple of days to make sure we like the finish before sealing and sharing.