Talk dirty to me about your attics and garages..

[bloodysecuritytag]

Complete tidy haven or disaster zone? This is our garage. As you can see it's a complete bomb site. When next door open theirs and show off how tidy it is it makes me want to cry.
I also went into the attic for the first time last night and my god it's like a hoarders attic. In my defence it's only 1/4 boarded so if we had more room it might look better but I'm literally having sleepless nights over what's above my head. If we ever come to move I think I'd be best just to set fire to it all and rebuild!
Anyone else's house like this?

Yep, mine is the same. We have no loft but the garage is boarded out so has more stuff upstairs. Next door actually uses his garage for a car

@Hax

Yep, mine is the same. We have no loft but the garage is boarded out so has more stuff upstairs. Next door actually uses his garage for a car

What.. garages are for cars!?

Yep same. Our loft is boarded too & it’s filled with suitcases, clothes I’m saving for my youngest DD & all sorts. I thought it was normal. We’ve had to buy a trailer to store our camping gear in just so we can actually now get in the garage.

I'm 'not allowed' to store stuff in our loft, other than four suitcases. DH says a loft is like the Bermuda Triangle and given I haven't used those cases in two years, I think I agree!

The garage is, well, a shit tip. I could only dream of a garage as tidy as yours op. Please God one day I have the strength to tackle it...

So weird that this just popped up! I'm in the process of trying to acquire okd kitchen units to start organising our garage.

We also have garage envy for our neighbours- their garage is perfectly sorted and arranged AND fits their car! 🤦🏻‍♀️😩

If I had a garage it would be like that!

We don't have much storage so my house is incredibly densely packed.

I've just started watching the Minimal Mom videos on YouTube and it's actually been quite freeing to let things go.

She gives good advice on how to sort things without making a huge mess so you can just do it a bit at a time as you feel like it, rather than having to drag everything out and make more of a mess of the house.

I've done lots of the easy parts of the house one drawer or shelf at a time so it's not overwhelming. It is doable!

Although saying that I am scared to go up the loft. It's small, unboarded, very shallow pitch and full of random things DH has thrown up the ladder. I am dreading going up there!

no garage here.
but we have 2 sheds and a loft.

I sorted about 20 boxes of loft crap last month. it's always been well organised, I mean we know where things are (all boxes are labelled) but kids have grown out of things so I'm getting rid of old toys, books, shoes etc.

DH is building a new shed.
We will declutter as we go when filling New Shed, first from Shed 2 (can't even access the back of it atm) then from Shed 1.
looking forward to throwing out mouldy crap!

Then Shed 2 will be demolished and he'll build a garden office space.
We need to move Shed 1 eventually to make the covered side area bigger (we store bikes & stuff here, behind side gate), but the chickens' outdoor area is right next to it so we'll have to redesign that whole space....next year

I can barely get inside my garage (and no real loft because it’s a loft conversion) too too much junk. One of my tasks when I have a few child free days is to sort it all out. I’m sure there’s enough space if I reorganise.

We finally cleared our garage out after having collected lots of pallets and other assorted crap from renovation work since we moved 18 months ago. Used an online waste removal service (clearbee, I think, who were great) to shift all the junk, which cost just over £100. DH then got a load of metal shelves from Tufferman which were very easy to put up using just a rubber mallet (as he is wildly incompetent at DIY stuff) and it now looks really neat. Wish we’d done it months ago.

Our garage is the same... it's a running joke here that whenever anyone asks "where are we going to keep it?" - the answer is always "it can go in the garage"

When you declutter on a vast scale does it all go to the dump / charity shops? What are the logistics of this? Rent a van? Get council waste disposal to lift it?

I hate lofts so if I'm even thinking about putting something up there, I realise it's dead to me already so, our loft is empty.

We knocked the garage down to make space for an extension, so that meant brutal decluttering. I basically kept tools (now in hall cupboard) and garden stuff (now in one of those plastic garden store box things).

To be completely honest, I am borrowing space in my mum's garage, for one old filing cabinet I couldn't fit anywhere else!

@channeltwo when emptying the garage, some went to the dump because they have recycling zones for almost everything and we just did lots of car trips, some was freecycled, some a neighbour wanted, a little went in charity sacks. There was a final heap that I got a local waste collector to take.

We try to make it so you can walk through the garage from one end to the other. Sometimes you have to duck, mind, but it's possible.

My parents garage on the other hand It used to fit a car then DF spent years filling it full of "useful" bits of wood. Then as part of clearing it, he kept bringing round things he'd found in it to put in our garage. I returned the favour a couple of years back and gave him a whole room's worth of Trofast - so now his garage has storage, and mine has space

No garage - the last time we had a garage it filled up, so I didn't want one.

Loft isn't boarded and there's nothing up there - again, been there, done that with loft full of rubbish, so I make a point of not putting things in there. If it can't be stored in the house, it goes.

@CornedBeef451

If I had a garage it would be like that!

We don't have much storage so my house is incredibly densely packed.

I've just started watching the Minimal Mom videos on YouTube and it's actually been quite freeing to let things go.

She gives good advice on how to sort things without making a huge mess so you can just do it a bit at a time as you feel like it, rather than having to drag everything out and make more of a mess of the house.

I've done lots of the easy parts of the house one drawer or shelf at a time so it's not overwhelming. It is doable!

But how do you get just a bit out at a time? ESP for something like a garage…

Our garage and loft are awful.

The garage has a motorbike, gardening tools, decorating kit and tubs and paint, spare car seats, a couple of bookcases that we need to sell, and a whole load of books and toys that I intended to sell at a car boot sale but it just never happened.

The loft is honestly ridiculous... Christmas stuff, Easter stuff, Halloween stuff, suitcases, a tea set that I couldn't resist buying but have never used, empty boxes, loads of outgrown kids clothes, toys, cuddly toys in huge vacuum bags, memory boxes, general junk. The worst bit is that we can't really sort it out up there because the roof is low-pitched so you can't stand up. There's only so long you can stoop/ crouch/ sit on the hard floor.

Then we have a shed with bikes, scooters, garden toys, big packs of hay etc for the rabbits.

Out of sight, out of mind! 🤦‍♀️

@HarrietHairbrush I've been doing a shelf or drawer at a time. I quickly go through it and put things in a rubbish bag or a bag for the charity shop or whatever. Leave it tidy and then do a bit more next time I can. Once the bags are full they get taken to the tip/charity shop or wherever.

Once I've cleared out at the crap I can then organise what's left.

I sometimes end up with odd piles of things waiting to go somewhere but it's not been too bad.

Our garage did look like this, then we had a massive clear out last summer, MiL had the kids so we could really tackle it and do tip runs and now it's neat and tidy bar a few cardboard boxes awaiting the tip. We can't use our attic as we rent and it was part of the contract

Does a massive declutterathon make you feel less likely to accrue the type of "stuff" which would end up as clutter? Planning a purge here...

My attic is a bedroom and my garage is tidy.....but only because I've had 3 days off work and decided to tidy it as was struggling to find things I needed. Mind you it won't stay like that for long!

We live in an apartment and when we bought it we bought 3 garage spaces for two cars and a LOT of shit. We also have a cellar. We had a bit of a declutter yesterday but still loads to do. The problem is hobby stuff, I think we have 7 pairs of skis (there are 4 of us), 2 snow boards, 3 sledges, two inflatable boats, four life jackets, 2 tents, assorted camping stuff, loads of Christmas stuff plus other stuff. It just takes vast amounts of space and looks a mess however tidy you try to store it!

My garage is big and absolutely full of crap too! Looks like cross between and crack den and hoarders anonymous... I'm going to sort it out this week and take loads of stuff to the tip

Our attic looked like the photo. I brought down all the junk out of our attic when we started having some mobility issues. There are a few carpet ends up there now, ans some mostly empty shelving. But not much of the junk got thrown out, so all my cupboards are crammed, every open shelf is full, and tubs stacked in several rooms.

The garage and shed are crammed too. Lots of shelving full and double-stacked. The double garage is almost entirely full of MrTidyHouse's diy stuff that never gets used, so it is filthy and coated with dust and grease The shed is easy for me to deal with, as it is more household stuff. The greenhouse is full of useful lengths of wood.