Discover How To Safely
Squeeze More Into Your
Garage Storage Space

Is your Garage Storage Space fully Utilized?

The typical garage is large enough to park 2 or 3 cars and often comprises of 20% or more of the total floor area of the average American home.

Todays garages are usually attached, form an integral part of a homes design and are at least partially finished. However, their Garage Storage Potential is seldom utilized.

When properly utilized, your garage storage space can be your most economical storage solution. Much less than that mini storage unit down the road. 

Eliminate Storage Rental Fees!

Safely Squeeze More Into Your Garage

However you must first:

1/ Determine Garage Floor Storage Space

2/ Determine Garage Wall Storage Space

3/ Garage Ceiling Storage Space

4/ Calculate Overall Garage Storage Space

5/ Calculate Useable Garage Storage Space

Garage Storage Space

In the garage, there are Three Areas available for storage.

1/ The Garage Floor

2/ The Garage Walls

3/ The Garage Ceiling

However, homeowners often do not know how to determine or utilize the amount of garage storage space they already have.

Determining Storage Space

Garage Floor Storage Space

A 20 foot by 20 foot 2 car garage of 400 square feet is considered small and tight. A 24 by 24 foot garage of 576 square feet is considered large and roomy.

To arrive at your garage floor space, multiply garage width by depth. From this number, deduct the area of any structural intrusions or permanent fixtures (e.g. hot water tank, furnace, steps etc.).

A mid size car is 15 to 16 feet long, 6 feet wide and consumes from 90 to 100 square feet of garage floor space just to park. If you allow a three (3) feet on two sides and one end of each car for ingress and egress, (the ingress egress area) another 100 square feet of floor space is consumed.

To find out how much garage floor space your car(s) consume, measure their length and width of each car to get the car area.

Next, add 3' to the length and 6' to the width. Multiply these numbers to get the minimum safe parking space for each car.

The bottom line is that parking a mid size car in your garage and allowing for safe ingress and egress consumes over 200 square feet of garage floor space.

Usable Garage Floor Storage Space

Subtracting the area of your Car Parking Space and the Floor Space consumed by appliances, structural features and permanent fixtures, will give you the amount of Usable Garage Floor Storage Space.

Most likely, unless you have a large garage, you already know how little Usable Floor Storage Space you actually have. If you have a small garage, (20' x 20') your Garage Storage Space is probably limited to the walls and ceiling. That is, unless you park one car in the weather.

Garage Wall Storage Space

Wall storage helps keep the floor free of clutter. To find out how much garage wall space you have:

1/ Measure the height and width of each wall

2/ Measure the height and width of all doors, windows

3/ Measure the area of any wall appliances, structural intrusions or permanent fixtures

4/ Deduct the area of doors, windows, appliances structural intrusions or permanent fixtures from the wall area in 1 above. The result is your garage wall storage area

The amount of garage wall storage space is the garage wall area times the distance from the wall you have to safely store items.

(e.g. if you have a 12 inches of space along a wall, you would multiply the wall area by 12. If you have more than the 12" for say 24" for 4 feet, you would multiply 12" times 4 feet times the height and add that number to the garage wall storage space).

Garage Wall Storage Systems maximize wall storage space

Garage Ceiling Storage Space

To find out how much garage ceiling space you have:

1/ Measure the height of your garage and deduct 7 feet ( the minimum clearance for a car and people). This is your ceiling storage area height. In a 9' garage this would be 2' (9' - 7')

2/ Multiply the width by the length of your garage by the ceiling storage area height in 1 above (20' x 20' = 400 sq ft x 2' = 800 cubic feet)

3/ Measure the area of any ceiling intrusions (e.g. heating ducts, plumbing, beams)

4/ Measure the area of any wall appliances, structural intrusions or permanent fixtures

5/ Deduct the area of any ceiling intrusions from the garage ceiling storage area in 2 above

The resulting number is the maximum area in cubic feet you have for ceiling storage. What you are planning to store in this area will determine the type of Ceiling (overhead) Storage System you should use.

Overall Garage Storage Space

To arrive at your Overall Garage Storage Space, multiply the garage width by length by height. This is the cubic feet of your overall garage.

(e.g. 24 ' wide x 20' deep x 9' high = 432 cubic feet of storage area)

Most garages have some floor, wall or ceiling storage space consumed by appliances or structural features or permanent fixtures such as plumbing, heating ducts, furnaces, hot water tanks, laundry tusbs etc.

To figure out how much garage storage space they consume, simply measure the space consumed and deduct it from the Overall Garage Storage Space.

1/ Useable garage floor storage space

2/ Useable garage wall storage space

3/ Useable garage ceiling storage space

Adding the above floor, wall and ceiling storage spaces together gives you the total Useable Storage Space.

Subtracting the total storage space required to store all the items on your completed Take Inventory Form tells you if you have enough Usable Storage Space to Safely Squeeze everything into your Garage.

If you don't have enough useable Garage Storage Space for everything, Dispose of more items or find Extra Storage Space.