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How to utilise all the space in a garden shed
The key to maximising the storage space in a shed is, to be honest, much the same as anywhere else and a little bit of preplanning is the key.
The storage of random shaped objects is about as inefficient as you can get and ‘shed stuff’ often falls firmly into that category, from rakes and forks to bikes and the lawnmower (together with that pesky tangled lead!) Add in lawn food, old paint tins, garden furniture and a broken sack of BBQ charcoal it can easily become quite a mess.
When it comes to a garden shed treat it just like another storage space. You would not consider having a kitchen unit without shelves or drawers at appropriate spaces to fit in the various different sizes of things like cereal packets, tins and jars of spices, or having a wardrobe without shelves and a hanging rail. So why do we often have a shed with everything sitting on the floor?! Use storage units, shelves and hooks. It is not a bad thing to consider using old kitchen units or wardrobes for this.
Our Top Tips for Storage in Garden Sheds
1) Utilise all the space including the walls and ceiling, not just the floor
- Start by looking at all the space and bear in mind the total cubic footage not just the floor space.
- Make use of the ceiling, some standard sheds have a higher apex height. Permitted development allows garden sheds to be up to 2.5m even when next to a boundary fence, this is as high as a standard ceiling on a new build house. This allows you to hang stuff in the ceiling space and still walk underneath. The ceiling space is also normally the driest being away from the cold damp ground so put a couple of bearers up and store the garden cushions up there, a net to hang them can be useful or maybe use the space for longer things like set of steps.
2) Standardise the size of items by storing them in boxes
- Put all paint cans in one box, garden chemicals in another etc.
3) Adjust your shelving to utilise the standard sizes of the storage boxes.
- Make or adjust shelving to fit the designated containers.
- If you do not want to use storage boxes just group items to be stored by some sort of size grouping.
- Add extra shelves to accommodate smaller items.
- Remember space goes up as well as around.
4) Use hanging space for awkward items
- Long awkward things like garden tools are always best hanging, if resting on the floor they will all get tangled up and, inevitably, the one you want will always be at the back.
5) Position bikes and lawnmowers in the centre
- If there is enough room to fit wall brackets then that is the best way to store bikes.
- If not, put the bikes and lawnmower in last and in the centre. That way they are easily removable when you need access to anything else, rather than forever trying to get around them.
6) Plan against damp
- The floor is always the surface most likely to suffer from damp
- The antidote to damp in an unheated environment is air flow. So do not store heavy solid things directly on the floor, raise them slightly above it
- Things like bags of compost are particularly prone to encouraging damp as they are often damp themselves. Just putting them on a pallet giving air flow underneath will be a great help