Originally Posted By Jim in Merced CA While I grew up in a suburb of L.A., I've made some interesting observations since moving to suburbia here in Merced. One is, the garage. I'm amazed at how many people have their garages so filled with so much junk, that they can't put the car in the garage. The car is parked on the street or in the driveway, and the garage is filled with boxes of junk. I just don't get it. I have a one-car garage, and can fit my SUV in it. Plus a little bit of junk, but there's no way, with a garage, that I would park my car on the street. So how about you? Do you use your garage for junk? Or for your car?
Originally Posted By 4Disnee We also use our garage for our 56 Ford Pickup along with all of DH goodies. LOL We have 1 car and 3 trucks and not one of them is parked in the street. Our garage will fit only 1 but its a two car garage but way to small for more that one. The other 3 we park in our drive way.
Originally Posted By mele We used to have a crazy amount of junk in our garage. We completely cleaned it out this spring, but we're renovating it into a family room because we have a small house. So, no room for a car. I threw away a lot of stuff but we also put a lot in storage. I hate that we spend money every month to store all of our crap. Most of the boxes are filled with holiday decorations or craft supplies. It almost seems kind of sinful.
Originally Posted By Lisann22 Aye yi yi! I wish I could park my truck in the garage but sadly I can't. All my non-profit supplies are in our garage. It's part storage and workshop for our jewelry making. Thankfully we have a very wide driveway to park 2 vehicles in, could put 3 if we squeezed in.
Originally Posted By pacomama Sadly, my 1-car garage hasn't seen a car in the 6 years that I've lived here. It's filled with my husband's tools and my junk.
Originally Posted By hopemax My parents never parked their car in their garage. My dad turned the garage into a workshop, so table saw, lathe, band saw, jig saw, sanders and any other power tool you can think of. We don't have a garage, but I want one...for all the original packaging for my Disney collectibles.
Originally Posted By trekkeruss What I never understood was it seems like garages are more common on the west coast than here in the east. When my dad moved us here to the D.C area 30+ years ago, most houses didn't seem to have a garage. Some might have a carport, but a lot would just have a gravel "driveway" for the car. You'd think with the much more varied weather, from ice cold and snow to burning hot a garage would be a nice thing to have. What struck me as even more odd was people who would take their garage and turn it into another room. Silly, by my way of thinking.
Originally Posted By Lisann22 You guys don't have fences either. That took some getting used to when this California girl moved East.
Originally Posted By trekkeruss <<What struck me as even more odd was people who would take their garage and turn it into another room.>> Just to be clear, I meant that people would actually go the whole distance: they would have a contractor come in and remove the garage door and built a real wall, turning the former garage into another room. I think a garage is for a car, so you have a secure place to store it, and you don't have the car sitting outside in the sun or snow. Who wants to have to enter a furnace and burn your hand on the steering wheel, or scrape ice and snow off your car?
Originally Posted By mele <<What struck me as even more odd was people who would take their garage and turn it into another room. Silly, by my way of thinking.>> Well, it's cheaper to convert a garage into a room than it is to build an entirely new addition to the house. I don't think it's silly to save thousands of dollars and a lot of time and effort.
Originally Posted By trekkeruss <<it's cheaper to convert a garage into a room than it is to build an entirely new addition to the house.>> I understand. I just put more importance on a garage for storing a car. Cars are expensive, and anything to protect it is worth having, IMO.
Originally Posted By debtee We have a double garage and one side is for my car which takes up most of the room as it's a big 4wd! The other side is for Barry and he has his new Motorbike and all the accessories that goes with this bike there, which seems to keep growing. He has also set up a desk and PC just in case he wants to surf the net while in the garage looking up bikes and stuff. I think it's too hot in summer to sit in the garage but he's happy so that's the important thing. He also has an office inside the house! We don't have any Junk anymore as we only bought this house 18 mths ago and I got rid of all Junk in the move! We have a garden shed for all the garden tools and it's neat and no junk in there either! Barry's car is in the carport. So it's all organised and I prefer it over our old house where we had junk everywhere!
Originally Posted By smeeeko I'm wishing we had a garage to consider too! =) our complex has carports & no storage. I got my bike rusting away on the balcony. I swear I'd ride it if it was more convenient where we live *fingers crossed* but more importantly I find it weird how the space in garages have changed over the years.. Where I grew up we could fit 2cars in the 2car garage, as well the workbench my dad built and the particle board cabinets he made with all his tools to store the camping & sporting gear & fishing poles & whatnot we kept in it.. Sure he had to pull out of the garage to use his table saw.. but we fit both the station wagon and the sedan in there. (mid late 70s) The bicyles and were a little trickier but still we got it all in.. wasn't a fancy garage either like you see in the Midwest these days.. but it worked. I would love to be able to NOT have our recycling bins in the dining room.. In SF you have to pay big bucks to have a parking spot let alone a garage.. It's weird what a luxury a garage is. =)
Originally Posted By MomofPrincess Well, if it were up to ME, my car would be in the garage... but it's not. We have a FOUR-car garage and there is exactly one car in it. A 1939 something that's being restored. *sigh* I guess that's more important than my 2006 Camry baking out in the desert sun, day after day. Can you tell I have issues with this?! It goes along with being a Garage Widow.
Originally Posted By TALL Disney Guy Uh-oh...sounds like there's trouble 'tween Mama and Carl in Raytown! ;-P
Originally Posted By Ursula If I had a garage, I'd use it for my car(s). Then, I'd build large storage areas out of plywood and two-by-fours in the unused verticle space. Now, I do have a sort-of carport/parking space with a large locked storage area, but it's not big enough.
Originally Posted By PlainoLJoe Ours has our pool table in it. I have never garaged a car. Too much hastle.
Originally Posted By LVBelle I would LOVE a garage! We don't even have covered parking at my apartment complex. Like Smeeko we have a bike rusting on our balcony and no storage space at all. We have so much stuff, even after we got rid of a ton, I really wish we had a garage to fill with my junk!
Originally Posted By Big Thunder I grew up in the suburbs of LA and our house had a 2 car garage. My dad had motorcycles and custom car and they occupied the garage, along with parts, motors, tools etc. There was little room for boxes and stuff but the rafters held Christmas decorations and old junk. Neither my dad's nor my mom's everyday driving cars were ever in the garage, we had a wide driveway, both were parked outside. Our current house has a one car garage, It is quite small, we've never owned a car small enough that would ever fit in there, it was used for tools, gardening equipment and work stuff, but later became crammed packed with *STUFF* [aka junk] Things just kept migrating out to the garage, the garage was stage 2 storage, things started in stage one storage [aka Big Thunder's office] about twice a year things from my office would end up in garage so I didn't have to look at it anymore. We just bought a new house, not far from where we live now [still in the San Gabriel valley of Los Angeles] it is literally twice as big as our current home and the garage is double in size. 8 weeks ago we began decluttering, throwing out stuff that was deemed useless and wasting space. I was amazed at how many boxes and large trash bags was taken to Goodwill or thrown out in trash, and it barely made a dent. For the last 3 weeks we've been packing and this last week I rented a trash bin to go through stuff in garage. I can honestly say that over half of the items occupying the garage are totally unnecessary, half of it I threw out and carted off to whatever donation center would take it. I'd say that 60% of the stuff we've accomulated over that last 15 years is just wasting space and we are now movivated to finaly get rid of it. Now, here's the embarrassing part.. I am moving to a bigger place with a bigger garage, but am I going to use it for parking cars? I am ashamed to say... "no" Someone mentioned converting garages to a room... I have plans to do just that. Convert the detached garage into a studio/pool house, which means I will have limited storage and parking space. Fortunately there is a enough room for all three of our large vehicles to park outside in driveway.
