There are a lot of of great garage storage products out there.  The MVP, however, might be something that you may think of as nothing. In my last post, I discussed when empty is golden. This certainly includes an empty garage floor. Here are three reasons why  your garage floor may be its greatest asset.

Protect Your Car!

Do you have so much stuff in your garage, that you can’t park a car? If you do, you’re in good company. In April 2015, Gladiator®Garage Works conducted a study. It found that almost 1 in 4 Americans can’t fit even one car in their garage. The reason? The garage was too cluttered! So if you are protecting a bunch of old junk in your garage, consider it’s value. Is that value the same as the $30,000 investment that you have parked unprotected in the driveway?

Room to Process

I often say that your #1 tool for organizing is a clear work surface. A reliably clear-able floor is also a valuable tool in processing items. This is particularly true if you have a large quantity of items to assign to discard, donate, and sell. You can store a lot of bins in overhead storage, but if your floor is still cluttered, you have no space to process. At this point, it is clearly time to clear! A professional organizer can help you get to systems where you can stay organized.

Room to Access

The main reason that I am such a big fan of Monkey Bars storage system is the floor space that they create. Garages tend to collect a lot of items that are not shelf-friendly. Large, awkward items like bicycles, golf bags, and wheel-barrows can be suspended off the floor. This opens up space, to allow car doors to open. If you like to keep cabinets in your garage, don’t forget the floor space in front of them. Cabinets are useless for reliable storage if you can’t open the doors. Often, the empty space allowing for accessibility is more valuable than the item filling it.

Of course, an empty garage floor doesn’t look so valuable, if it is covered with stains. A beautiful floor can help you assign the value that your garage floor deserves. One product I really like is the vinyl chip coating, offered by A.G. Williams. Not only does this coating make your garage floor incredibly durable, but it looks amazing! It is also easy to clean, so it continues to look amazing.

Just to be clear, when I am taking about empty, I am referring to areas that can be easily emptied. I certainly don’t think there is a value in leaving a garage floor empty at all times. Indeed there are times when I believe things should be kept airplane-runway-empty. However, the goal here is airplane-hangar empty. Here’s what I mean. Airplane-runway-empty means open for temporary processing.  Airplane-hangar-empty means that you can use a space for storage, but it is easily emptied. It’s one large item with wheels, whose absence suddenly creates a lot of space. The difference between that and moving 100 boxes of postponed decisions is night and day. It’s empty-able breathing vs. un-empty-able suffocation. Let your garage floor be the former, not the latter.