Signs your garage needs organizing: </p><p> &bull;Your entire wardrobe is gray to disguise the salt marks from squeezing past your car. </p><p> &bull;You tiptoe and stumble over piles of (unused) sports equipment. </p><p> &bull;You&rsquo;re just tired of the mess. </p><p> Whatever the reason, now&rsquo;s a good time to start. </p><p> If a survey by the Lehigh Group of Pennsylvania is any indication, many of us need to. The company, which makes the Crawford brand of storage devices, found that almost 40 percent of respondents had tripped over clutter in their garage; 22 percent had accidentally hit something while parking a car; and 27 percent had hit an object with a car door. </p><p> Organizing a garage involves more than cleaning it out and putting things back in neater piles. It requires culling your possessions and devising a plan for handling what&rsquo;s left, and it takes time and work. </p><p> Angie and Mickey Remen were recently still putting things back after Garage Closets finished installing storage cupboards in their Richfield Township, Ohio, garage. </p><p> The space had become a typical catchall for anything but cars: shoes, bikes and gardening equipment scattered on the floor and tools crammed haphazardly on shelves. Now the garage is lined with clean, white cabinets, and Angie Remen is trying to decide what to hang on the pegboard above her new potting bench. </p><p> &ldquo;It&rsquo;s unbelievable,&rdquo; Mickey Remen said of the change. </p><p> The Remens were lucky enough to have professional help, but it&rsquo;s not essential to hire a contractor or invest in built-in cabinetry to have an organized garage. What is necessary, experts say, is forethought. </p><p><strong><span class="subhead">Getting started</span></strong></p><p> Figure on garage organization being a big job &mdash; possibly more than a day, if you have a lot of stuff. If the job is overwhelming, start with the floor, suggests Joanna M. Quandt, a professional organizer who runs the company JMQ Professional Organizing Services in Copley Township, Ohio. </p><p> Decide before you start where you will put everything during the organizing process. And as you move things out, sort them into general categories &mdash; sporting equipment, tools, toys and so on. Then, as you remove things from the garage, you can sort them at the same time. </p><p> Take the opportunity to rid yourself of the things you don&rsquo;t need. Letting go of a possession can be hard, but &ldquo;have a good reason for keeping it,&rdquo; advises Jim McCourtie, president of Garage Closets. Don&rsquo;t keep anything that is broken or anything you acquired &ldquo;just in case,&rdquo; he said. </p><p><strong><span class="subhead">Where to put stuff</span></strong></p><p> Once everything is culled and sorted, start thinking about how to store it. </p><p> Knowing what you have to store will help you choose the right options. Home centers, hardware stores and specialty retailers carry a huge array of devices, including hangers for hand tools and wheelbarrows. You&rsquo;ll find cupboards, shelves, magnetic strips for holding small tools, bins and racks for toys and sporting equipment, pegboards and hinged hooks that swing out of the way when they are not in use. </p><p> Or use what you already have, Quandt said &mdash; old bookshelves, chests of drawers or a simple board attached horizontally to the wall with nails and hooks for hanging things. </p><p><strong><span class="subhead">More considerations</span></strong></p><p> Make sure shelves, cupboards and hooks can hold the weight of your stuff. Most hooks and other hardware are labeled with a safe working load, said Jamie Ibrahim, product manager for the Lehigh Group. </p><p> McCourtie prefers the uncluttered look of enclosing everything behind doors, but that&rsquo;s largely a matter of preference.