Welcome to Day 24 of 30 Spaces in 30 Days. I’m going to be completely honest with you about today’s space before we start: I dislike our garage.

It’s not a space I find joy in, it’s not a space I’ve ever particularly wanted to spend time in, and it’s not a space that features in any vision of how I want our home to feel. It’s functional. It’s necessary. And in Minnesota, where the winters are long and genuinely cold and the idea of spending any extended time in a cold garage is not remotely appealing, it has a tendency to accumulate things in a way that most other spaces in our home don’t.

And that’s okay. Not every space in your home has to be loved. Some spaces just have to work. Today, we’re making sure the garage works.

The Minnesota Garage Problem

If you live anywhere with a real winter, you probably understand this intimately. When it’s genuinely cold outside — and in Minnesota, genuinely cold means genuinely cold for genuinely months — the garage becomes the path of least resistance for anything that’s inconvenient to deal with in the cold. A box that needs to go to storage. Items that are waiting to find a home. Things that got carried out there during a burst of organizational energy in October and haven’t been touched since.

None of it happens all at once. It accumulates gradually, box by box and item by item, until spring arrives and you open the garage door and realize that the space has quietly become something you don’t love looking at.

Spring — right now, actually — is the perfect time to deal with it. The weather is warming up, the worst of the cold is behind us, and there’s something energetically right about clearing out the garage as the season changes. Today is the day.

What Our Garage Actually Looks Like

Our garage has storage shelves with labeled bins, which is genuinely the most functional thing we’ve done for the space — labels make a real difference in whether a storage system actually gets used consistently or gradually abandoned. We have a shoe rack by the door, which is practical and helpful. And we have our cars, which is obviously the primary purpose of the space.

What also tends to be in there: boxes that accumulated during the colder months when it was too inconvenient to deal with them properly, and items that are waiting for a decision that hasn’t been made yet. That’s the honest reality of a Minnesota garage in spring, and I suspect it’s the honest reality of a lot of garages regardless of climate.

Today we deal with the boxes and the undecided items. We make the shelves earn their keep. And we leave the garage feeling like a space that functions well even if it’s never going to be anyone’s favorite room.

How to Declutter Your Garage Today

Give yourself an hour for this one — maybe more if your garage has accumulated significantly. Dress for the weather, put on something good to listen to, and approach it with the same honest intention we’ve brought to every space in this challenge.

Step 1: Take stock of everything before you move anything. Walk through the garage and get a clear picture of what you’re working with before you start pulling things off shelves or opening boxes. Knowing what’s there helps you approach the work with a plan rather than just moving things around.

Step 2: Open every box. Every single one. Boxes that have been sitting in the garage for months — or longer — deserve to be opened and honestly assessed. What’s actually in them? Does it need to be kept? Does it belong in the house rather than the garage? Is it something that should be donated or let go entirely? A box you can’t identify the contents of without opening it is a box that hasn’t been earning its space.

Step 3: Audit the labeled bins. Labeled bins are only as good as what’s actually in them. Check each bin — does the contents match the label? Is everything in the bin still relevant and worth keeping? Are there things that need to be added or removed? A labeled bin system only works if it’s maintained honestly.

Step 4: Make decisions about the undecided items. This is the most important step in today’s process. The items that have been living in the garage because a decision hasn’t been made about them — today is the day to make every single one of those decisions. Keep and find a proper home, donate, or let go. The garage is not a decision-pending zone. Everything in it should have a reason to be there.

Step 5: Consolidate and reorganize the shelving. Once you’ve cleared out what doesn’t belong, reorganize what remains on the shelves with intention. Like with like, most-accessed items most accessible, everything with a consistent and labeled home. A storage system that makes sense is a storage system that stays organized naturally.

Step 6: Clear the floor as much as possible. A garage with a clear floor feels dramatically different from one where things have migrated to the ground. Everything that belongs on a shelf or in a bin goes back there today. The floor should hold only what genuinely needs to be there — vehicles, the shoe rack, things with a specific floor-level purpose.

Step 7: Deal with the shoe rack. While you’re in here — give the shoe rack an honest look. Are there shoes that belong inside? Shoes that are worn out and should be let go? Seasonal shoes that should be stored elsewhere? A shoe rack that holds only the shoes that genuinely belong near the garage door is a shoe rack that functions beautifully.

Step 8: Get the donate pile out immediately. Same rule as always — straight to the car today. The garage is often where donate piles go to live indefinitely, and today that cycle ends.

A Garage That Works

I’m not going to tell you that after today you’ll love your garage. You might not. I probably won’t love ours either, if I’m being completely honest.

But a garage that works — where everything has a home, where the shelves are organized and labeled, where the floor is clear and the boxes have been dealt with and the undecided items have been decided — is a genuinely different thing from a garage that accumulates. And opening that door to something functional and calm, even if it’s never going to be your favorite room, is a small but real improvement in the daily experience of your home.