How do you use your garage?

[Velar Fricative]

Background - we live in a fully-attached house in NYC without a garage. We are in an outer borough where we drive pretty often (including to work when we physically go to work), so we have two cars. However, we have a carport for one car and there is always ample street parking on our quiet block. DH and I have discussed selling the house, but not for another ~5 years. I don't want to sell but he wants to get a bigger house in the same area, so the 5 year timeline gives us time to do some renovations (needed whether we sell or don't) and then reopen the discussion about selling. 

One thing we would not be able to do with this house is add a garage, which he really wants. I'm skeptical of the need - when we finished the basement, we created a storage room that is used much like people use their garages (lots of shelving storage along the walls) and we bought a large shed for the yard for additional storage. It does snow here obviously, so I can see the appeal of being able to park one car in the garage to avoid shoveling, but winter doesn't last very long and we still have to dig out one car anyway unless we can find a magical house within our budget that has a 2-car garage (definitely possible around here, it's just that I don't expect it to fall within our budget). 

I'm expecting most people here have garages and can't imagine themselves without one, so I'm just curious what you use them for - parking your car(s?)? Storage? Home gym? Other uses? I've never lived in a home with a garage but DH has, but he only talks about storage (which we have) and parking the car inside when it snows as the big reasons why we need a garage.

[AdaraMarie]

Right side is where I park my car and have tools. Left side has bikes, toys,balls,etc Lawn chairs and games, lawn mower leaf blower, and a shelving unit that has misc lawn and home supplies stored. All the walls have pegboards where I have lawn game, tennis racquets, shovels, rakes, ladders and various types of clippers hung. Currently my outdoor pots are in there to avoid freezing.
The space is not used very efficiently because the kids expand their stuff to take all available room.
When I was married we parked a car and a truck in the garage and bikes were hung from the ceiling.
I do not have any other type of carport of shed so everything is in the garage.
ETA: parking inside in the snow is life changing, I would never want to go back to parking outside all winter if I could avoid it (and I live where the snow almost always melts in a day).

[mccallister84]

I grew up with a detached garage so we only used it for storage. I don’t recall anyone I know actually parking (or having an attached garage) in their garage when I was growing up (I grew up on LI).

Now we have a two car garage and currently park zero cars in it. We don’t have a shed so everything is in there - lawn mower, snowblower, kids toys etc. Before the kids we both parked in there. Now the kids have so much outdoor toys that we need to really carefully arrange them to fit them on one side of the garage. We do that when it starts to get colder and we aren’t outside as much. Then I park in the garage. We would need a shed to be able to get both cars in regularly. It is really nice with the kids not having to go outside in the cold to get in the car. I can’t see us buying a house here without a garage - just because all the houses in our price point would come with one, but I don’t know how sad I would be to lose it if we moved to my parents neighborhood - as long as we had a shed.

[devonpow]

We have a 2 car garage but it’s really old (house is 1905 not sure on age of garage but it’s old) so doesnt really fit cars that well). It’s detached but we have a breezeway between. We use the right side to park (we only have 1 car. Any passengers on the right side need to get out in the driveway before the car pulls in because there isn’t enough room to open the door). The left side we have shelving and store all sorts of stuff - garden stuff, ice melt, outdoor toys, sleds, bikes, beach chairs, the Thule for the top of the car, etc etc etc. In the winter we pull some outdoor furniture and cushions in as well.

If we didn’t have a garage but had a storage shed we would be fine for most stuff. The biggest benefit is being able to park indoors in the winter - no scraping the car and the snow service we use can easily plow the whole driveway for us. That would pain me if we didn’t have the garage.

[lilypad1126]

I grew up with a 2 car garage and my parents used it for parking 1 car and storage (my dad had a huge pickup truck that wouldn't fit anyway, so there was no need to figure out how to get 2 cars in there). I left for college at 18, and haven't had one since (I'm 40 now). The only reason I would want a garage now is to keep the snow off my car, and I've decided that's a bad reason try to get one since it doesn't snow that much where I live.

We need more storage and more room for a home gym these days, but even if I had a garage, I don't think I'd use it for much more than parking a car and a little storage. Clearly a garage is not much of a priority for us, ha.

[Deleted]

We have a 2 car attached garage and the left side is deeper than the right. The entire garage is my H's woodshop so it's full of tools.

My Mom's house has a 1.5 car garage and aside from a few years when we kids, it's pretty much always just been used for storage. When my grandfather lived with her before he passed away, his bedroom was the one above the garage and they added an elevator which takes up quite a bit of real estate now.

The majority of our storage is in the unfinished side of our basement and we also have a very large shed in the back yard that stores all of outdoor stuff like the tractor and snow blower and Christmas decorations and pool stuff and a bunch of other random stuff.

[InBetweenDays]

We have a two car detached garage. It is mostly storage for bikes, camping gear, tools, etc. We never park my or H's car in there because it's more if a hassle than just parking them on the street or in the driveway. And it's an old house/garage so H's car (4runner) wouldn't fit.

Right now we do have H's brother's car parked in there. He passed away last year and H is dealing with the estate and trying to figure out what to do with it, decide if we want to keep it for our kids, etc.

There is no way we could make it work without the storage, but if you have that storage elsewhere then I don't see the need for a garage (but it rarely snows here).

[lolalolalola]

We park our cars and our bikes in our garage. It’s great in the winter not to have to plug in or clear the snow off our cars. There is a lot of theft in the area so it keeps our bikes and cars safer from theft

Other items that I can’t imagine keeping in the house but could be kept in a shed are the- lawn mower, grass trimmer, snow shovels, snow blower, extra car wheels (we have two sets of wheels for each car because we change them to snow tires over the winter).

We keep a bunch of other items which could be kept in the house if we had to, including tools, workbench, camping supplies, Christmas decorations, etc. although I don’t know where we would practically fit them in our finished basement.

[Velar Fricative]

Thanks for the responses so far! I should also add that we don't have grass to maintain. Our yard is entirely made up of pavers and the front of our house has rock and plant landscaping. So that's a big reason why our existing storage options are pretty adequate for our needs. Plus DH and I don't have bikes (maybe one day, but there is room in our shed for those) and we are NOT interested in camping lol.

[pmwife]

We always have parked out cars in the garage, even when we had 3. We hang our bikes and have storage above the cars. It's a rule in our house that the vehicle must fit or we don't buy it.

[flygirl]

We live in MN where it snows..a lot, so we park in the garage so we don’t have to scrape and brush off vehicles. We’re lucky to have a three car garage for the lawn mower and other tools, but we have storage racks above for a lot of things and hang our bikes.

[lightbulbsun]

We have a 1.5 car garage. We have cabinets on one side for storage, and store large items (lawn mower, wheelbarrow, etc) against the back wall. We hang our bikes from the ceiling in the back as well. I can normally store my car there but recently we've been doing some renovations in the house so the garage is a staging point for materials and construction stuff. We do not have a shed.

[Susie]

Things currently in our attached 1-car garage:
- Bikes (H's road bike, my road bike, my commuter bike, DD's bike, DD's old balance bike, a tricycle), a double bike trailer, two scooters, and assorted helmets, cycling shoes, bike pump, spare wheels, and other accessories.
- BOB stroller
- Fishing gear 
- Snowshoes, cross country skis, ice skates
- Lawn mower, drop spreader, broadcast spreader, wheelbarrow, assortment of shovels and other gardening tools, bags of grass seed, fertilizer, soil acidifier for my hydrangeas, sunflower seed chips for my bird feeder, etc.
- Snowblower, snow shovels 
- extra extension cords 
- spare tile and other supplies from our bathroom reno projects that we have not found a better home for
- rooftop cargo box for our SUV, that has to come off when we aren't traveling in order for the SUV to fit in my work parking garage
- extension ladder
- spare lumber from projects
- chop saw

We used to park a car in our garage, but it's no longer tenable.  Eventually we think we're going to build a shed in the backyard for some of the lawn/gardening stuff that will help, and the kids will outgrow some of the trailers/strollers/etc.

[dr.girlfriend]

We are in the rare position of having gotten rid of our garage. We had a one-car garage and attic, that mostly just collected junk. We got rid of it to build our new master bedroom/bathroom and laundry addition, and have zero regrets. I got kind of an extreme reaction on Houzz -- I mean, those message boards have a lot of PITAs anyway, but there was a lot of pearl-clutching over "I would NEVER buy a house without a garage!" Truth is my whole neighborhood has houses with no garages...a few houses have added them here and there, as either detached or attached if they were situated the right way on the lot, but most do not.

The one thing I would like to do is have a small shed. Here is the stuff that is currently in our basement and I would like to move to a shed instead:
1. garden tools, potting soil, etc.
2. seasonal decorations
3. kid's bike

We pay for a lawn service so have no mower, etc. We are not outdoorsy, and our kid is not sporty, so we don't have a lot of sports equipment or outdoor gear. We have no need for a workshop. We have exercise equipment in the bedrooms mostly, but are clearing a space in the "formal living room" that we never use for our new treadmill. I wouldn't want to exercise in a garage anyway unless it had better temperature control.

I'm sure parking in a garage is nice, but for us we would have to just shovel the whole driveway then instead of just the half the car was on. We also have ample street parking.

We went from this:


To this:




So, really, zero regrets.  :-)  We also did this with the idea that we would be staying in this house forever, so we were not worried about lack of a garage being a dealbreaker for resale.

[corgimom]

I usually just post on MM/Got Pregnant but was lurking over here and thought I'd share since we have a 3-car attached garage.
We live in the midwest by the lake so we have long, cold winters with lots and lots of lake effect snow. I've lived a few places without a garage and it's do-able but it sucks. We actually have 3 cars so we park all 3 in the garage year-round. We also keep our trash and recycle bins in the garage, our deep freezer, lawn mower and snow blower. DH has a small work bench and some tools in the garage. On one wall we have other yard tools hanging and the opposite wall has hanging storage some of our DD's outdoor toys.
Storage stuff (holidays, camping stuff, random junk, etc) and our home gym are in the unfinished basement.

I do love having a garage and parking inside but if we lived somewhere with less winter-weather, not having a garage wouldn't be a big deal as long as we had a shed or basement for other storage stuff.

Not to make this longer but every house in our neighborhood has at least a 2 car garage and they all have basements. I'm always fascinated by how people use their garage if they are parking outside - one family down the street has a whole TV & bar set-up in their garage!

[k3am]

We have a "two car" garage. I'm not sure what two cars they expect to fit in there.. I guess technically when it's empty, we can fit two sedans side by side if you're very careful and only open car doors on one side. We are CA, so no basement. We have a crawlspace that we use for storage for things we only pull out 1-2x per year, but it's really hard to get to and the door to it is small, so it limits what we can store in there, so we don't really rely on it.

I park in the garage, DH is in the driveway. We also store bikes for the family, kid's outside stuff, tools, miscellaneous house stuff, holiday decorations/Christmas tree, tools, snowboards, bulk items from Costco, chest freezer, and all of our food that doesn't fit in the kitchen.

I wouldn't consider a house that didn't have a two car garage, but aside for some of the older neighborhoods around us, there really aren't that many.

[ssmjlm]

We have a double door garage, so it's a large door that I guess someone thinks 2 cars will fit in. Spoiler, they do not, maybe 2 mini coopers?

Anyway, I park in the garage, DH parks outside. We have a gladiator system on the back wall and part of the side for bikes, corn hole board, various kid toy crap, etc. We also have our 2nd fridge and upright freezer out there. On the wall by the garage door into the house, DH has a cabinet/drawer system that he got from lowes that has some of our paper product overflow from Costco, kid chalk/bubbles/crap, paint cans for temperature control, and some yard stuff that he doesn't like storing in the shed.

We do not have a basement. We have some attic access via the room over our garage, but it's mostly decorations and extra tile/carpet, etc from our build. Our shed houses a riding mower, pressure washer, tools, wood for the firepit/various projects, chemicals we don't want inside, etc.

[froggy76]

We have a 1-car detached garage that we use for storage. We've been here 6.5 years and have never even tried to get a car into it. We have a separate potting shed and another separate barn, so the stuff in the garage is mostly kids' stuff (bikes, scooters, stroller, toys, outdoor Jenga, etc.) I'd actually love to turn the garage into a guest house at some point.

If I had all the money in the world, I'd love to have a 2-car garage we actually park in, but that's pretty low on my priority list.

[wildrice]

I haven't had a private garage since 2013. When I had one, I used it to park and store outdoor stuff like the lawnmower, snow shovel, gardening tools, bikes, etc. My personal philosophy on storage is that if you need a whole garage to store stuff, you probably have too much stuff. Obviously, some people are really into outdoor rec and need to store things like kayaks and camping equipment, and some people do a ton of holiday decor, so I know there are exceptions - but it seems like a lot of people use garages as general storage of stuff that could be stored indoors, and I would rather just purge that stuff than have stacks of boxes or spare furniture or whatever.

It's nice to park your car indoors, but I've honestly never really had an issue with parking mine outdoors, either. I do currently wish we had a place to store the rake I just bought, and when I think about buying a bike I remember I have nowhere to store it, so I do think a garage would be nice sometimes but it's also pretty low on my list of priorities when choosing a home.

[bhnumbers]

We live in a close in suburb of DC and while most people have cars, it's pretty common to not have an garage--or have a detached one so old and small that it's really just a glorified shed. In our neighborhood, having an attached garage is kind of rare because the single lots are very narrow, so many houses have a detached garage or shed behind the house. On our block of 25+ houses we are one of 3 with attached garages.

We lucked out and were able to buy a house on a lot and a half that gave us room to add a single car garage when we did our renovation. We do use it to park one of our cars, but we made it big enough that we also store lots of other stuff like bikes, sports equipment, coolers, lawn stuff, etc. I was kind of meh on garages when we started talking about renovating, but it was basically the first thing on DH's priority list.

Funny story, when we bought our first house here (just down the street from where we are now), we had a detached garage behind our house. That winter when we were expecting a big snow storm, we made sure we move stuff out of the way so we could park in the garage and patted ourselves on the back for being so smart....until it was done snowing and we realized that since we parked in the garage, we now needed to shovel basically the entire driveway to be able to back the car down the 80' long driveway, lol. We're idiots.

[definitelyO]

2 car attached garage. we have 2 cars in the garage

also - we have shelves on all 3 sides - we store tools, snowboard/skis, camping gear (tent, sleeping bags, coolers)

also - our trash and recycle bins fit in the garage.

My first house had a 1 car garage with carport - but it was built in like 1920 so wasn't big enough for a car (even my then Dodge Neon ) - so had the lawnmower, yard equipment and DH's weight bench/work out area.

[brooklyn]

Our new house (!!) has a two car garage and we own zero cars LOL. (We’re buying one shortly)

Right now we have sporting gear, sleds, shovels, yard care, unwanted furniture and a million moving boxes in it. Hopefully just paring it down to sleds, shovels, sporting gear and lawn care materials (oh and extra renovation materials left by previous owners)

[nicolewi]

Well, you couldn't sell a house around my area without a garage. Obviously this is totally regional. Literally everyone has a garage here unless you live in an apartment. Even tiny city homes generally had a non-attached old garage on a back alley. Virtually all homes built from, say, 1960s onward, have attached garages. It's cold & snowy in winter.

My garage is a 3 car plus some garage. Anyway, first, we keep two large vehicles in the garage. It's awesome to go out on a rainy or cold or snowy day and not have to go outside to get to or from the car. When I come home with groceries, etc, we park in the garage and can make multiple trips back and forth easily to unload...again without going outside. I can run out in the middle of the night and put something in the car for the next day, or look for something in the car (i.e. did I leave my coffee cup? jacket? phone?).

Things we also keep in the garage:
--garbage cans/recycling can
--bikes, scooters, trikes, etc.
--a few seasonal decorations
--garden/lawn care supplies
--big toy bin, sidewalk chalk, kites, kiddie pool, water table, etc.
--folding lawn chairs/sports chairs
--Some random storage stuff
--snow/rain boots sometimes
--sports equipment
--birdfeeders/birdseed

[CrazyLucky]

My kids were shocked when they found out garages are for cars. We used to keep one car in the two car garage, but now we keep the pop-up in its space. The other side is lawn things and DH's workshop. We don't have a basement or any other outside storage, so it is pretty important to us.

[Mrs.flang]

I’ve had an attached one car garage in both houses I’ve lived in and have never parked a car in it. We use it for storage and run out of room for the car. And I live in the northeast with snow. I think it’d be nice to park a car in it but I’ve never been able to make it work.

[hbomdiggity]

We have a two car garage, but like pp mentioned the only way you are getting two cars in there is with nothing else in it. We do park one car in there (mine) and have:

- deep freezer
- 2 large tool chests
- camping storage
- sand/snow toys
- power washer
- large safe

[sandandsea]

We have a three car garage. One bay is for a car. Half a bay is storage of bikes, outdoor toys, camping stuff, car stuff, sports and hobby stuff and 1.5 bays is for DH and DS’s racing stuff. We also have a workbench in there for working in engines, etc.

[redheadk]

We have a 3 car garage.

Bay 1 (rear): DH's workshop/tool storage area. In reality, his workbench with all of his 3D printers and crap he will not throw away.

Bay 2 (front): some classic car from the 50s that is in some state of repair. It does not run. We have had it for 6 years. He promised it would be running in 3 months.

Bay 3 (front): some storage along the walls, bikes, trash cans, whatever other random crap that ends up getting put down/piled up in the garage because it's an absolute disaster so it's impossible to actually put anything away because my DH won't throw actual trash away.

Note that none of the cars we drive can actually fit in our garage with everything else in there. 

I swear 90% of that stuff could go and we wouldn't miss it.

[5thofjuly]

We have a 2.5 car garage. It holds my sedan, DH’s truck (at an angle), our trash cans, all of his tools and workbench, our riding and push mowers, and my gardening stuff.

We kept the same stuff in the garage when we had a 3 car, but also had a second fridge/freezer and the water heater and furnace were in there.

[icedcoffee]

2 car attached garage. We store 2 cars. Plus some bikes, lawnmower, snowblower. Garage was absolutely a MUST for me. It just makes life to much easier. Rain or snow? Pull into the garage. Need to store something large for a few days? Garage. Want to paint furniture or other messy project? Garage.

My H wasn’t convinced so when we shopped we were ok with 1 car garage and I’d get the spot. We ended up with 2 and he absolutely agrees with me now. Even when we store something in the garage and he has to park outside for a few days he gets annoyed now. LOL

My ideal house would be a 2.5 or 3 car garage but we’re not that rich.

I absolutely dont understand people who have garages and don’t park in them. (Like half my neighborhood). I’d get rid of everything I owned to be able to use it for parking and not storage. LOL

It is pretty cramped with my minivan, his sedan, some lawn stuff and some toys but we make do.

Eta: our garage is attached to a mud room which is part of why it’s so functional.

Eta2: I’d love to add a shed in the back to make it a little less cramped. Technically our HOA doesn’t allow it but I’m thinking if we put a non ugly one under the deck they’d let it go. We may do it and ask for forgiveness instead of permission. We’d put lawnmower, chainsaw etc there and a few bigger toys.