Garage is Garbage without the B

Hey, remember me?  The Ranter?  We moved into our house over a year ago and I promised to keep blogging but rarely have I been home to enjoy our new house, let alone do any projects to show off.  But now, as kayaking season is winding down and the weather is actually cool enough that we can sit outside and enjoy it, I spent some time time today puttering around in our gar<b>age.

Our garage: the only place that looks worse is the basement.

yes, i own a lot of boats.  There's a boat for every river, and I want them all

We haven't done squat to organize the garage or basement, with the exception of these very awesome kayak hangers:

With one hand I can raise and lower each boat (each weighs 50-60 pounds) down to the ground or right on top of my car.  While I'd like to take credit for being able to engineer it, we bought a kit called the Harken Hoister.  They make them for bikes, canoes, kayaks, mother-in-laws and anything else you might want to suspend from the ceiling. A tad pricey but I HIGHLY recommend.  We are fortunate that our garage ceiling is so high that the boats can be clear of the garage doors.  Garage doors that we don't really use because we can't squeeze either of our compact cars into the garage right now!!

I'm hearing that this winter might be a bit snowy so its time to maybe think about cleaning and organizing the garage to make it useable.

First will be to put some small shelves above the laundry sink.  But beyond that I'm a bit at a loss.

I've been thinking about maybe putting a large shelf all the way around the top of the garage for storage of things we don't use very much - my hammock, kayak crap, random tools and yard toys.  Then just get some regulation plastic shelves for storage of the usual garage stuff.  But how to install a nice sturdy shelf like that?  <scratches head and cracks beer>

So, for all my blogger friends, please share how you have overcome the rather small 2-car garage in most of the Ryan homes.  I would love tips and pictures and maybe even a how-to or two or three.

Take care and enjoy the fall weather, my blogger friends.