Side-of-garage gear storage: French cleat or?
kaitlyn2004
| Posted in General Discussion on
I want to utilize the side of my garage for “in-season” outdoor gear – hanging bags, poles, snowshoes, skis, helmets, etc.
I have about 1-1.5ft of width to work with (assuming I want to park my car in the garage), so not a ton of space at all – though the available width increases a bit as you go higher (and car mirror out of the way + it slopes inwards a bit)
I am not parking my car in the garage daily or even weekly, but I’d prefer to have a solution where I don’t BLOCK my car from being able to park (even if that meant I had to temporarily move/rearrange some or all of it)
I initially thought of the french cleat option, and then making custom holders/pegs/etc. for my various items. I like this that would allow my to utilize the space for my gear and also rearrange for the seasons – i.e. move the skis high up out of easy reach in summer, and bring back to arm height for easy regular access). On the flipside, the versatility also seems to somewhat limit usability of the space? i.e. with shelving, you can easily pile gear on top of each other – but then it becomes a bit of a mess and things get lost.
Is a french cleat the smart choice here? Slat wall? Pegboard? A shallow shelving unit? Something else?
So while this area is narrow, it’s also very long – easily 8′ of width and height to work with. Very open to any ideas or advice for maximizing this space!
A side small note is that quite possibly muddy, wet, or otherwise dirty gear would end up on this wall – though if a solution required me to dry out/clean first, I COULD work with that…
Replies
The most recent episode of Shop Talk Live (I think it's the most recent. . .) contains a discussion of why pegboard is lame, so that might be worth a listen.
I kinda like the french cleat option with lots of custom-made holders. I am not super organizationally-inclined myself, so any time I see a shelf or cubby, it's definitely going to become a mess. Dedicated holders/hangers for stuff makes sense to me.
Slatwall seems like it would be quite expensive, and in my experience (which includes retail store merchandising, which is what slatwall was originally for), the pegs are prone to falling off when you lift off the item, and they then bounce (loudly) into some very inconvenient place. Gridwall could be cool--the hangers are a bit more resistant to falling off, and you can use a small rare earth magnet to hold them in place. It's cheap to buy but very expensive to ship, so it often works best if you can find a supplier within reasonable driving distance. I use gridwall for kitchen pots and it's very practical--takes a wide range of hooks, in addition to simple S hooks, carabiners, etc.
Ooh that grid wall system is interesting. In a way it could look a bit cleaner too. Hmmmmm
Although based on the "wire mesh" system, I wonder if it is less capable of weight and more prone to bending as things may bang it or if weight is not evenly distributed (which it surely won't be)
French cleats must be in two parts. For a cabinet, half the cleat goes on the wall, and half on the cabinet. It's simple, dirt cheap, and can carry an awful lot of weight.
But I have no idea how that would work with a backpack, or snowshoes, or anything else that wasn't, basically, a box.
If things needed to be close to the wall, I would just use hooks, which are perfect for irregularly shaped objects. If you have more depth, I would personally prefer shelves.
The slat wall systems seem nice, and look very good. But they cost way more than I would ever care to spend on garage storage. A lot more.
I used the Gladiator (by Whirlpool) system for managing my garage wall spaces. Lowes has their line of stuff. Not cheap but sturdy plastic. I have skateboard in my laundry room that is basically MDF and I don't think its strong enough for use in a garage and with wet objects.
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