Just a couple years ago, my garage looked like the photo above: stuffed to the gills and a severe hindrance to getting things done. It was one of those catch-22 situations in which I needed the space to complete the projects that littered the garage, but the projects themselves took up the space that I needed to complete them.

Unfortunately, garages themselves (and not the stuff in them) don't exactly rise to the top of the priority list. So I could kiss all those dreams of fancy organizers and workbenches goodbye. Yet I still needed to make my garage useful again, otherwise the cruft would just keep piling up. I needed a plan, or at least a semblance of a plan, to get the most of this space without spending much. How this greasy monkey got his habitat back.