Slatwall Storage for the Win!

Believe it or not, the main reason people invest in efficient garage storage solutions is not simple aesthetics. It’s safety. According to the Lehigh Group, a Philadelphia manufacturer of garage organizers, 40% of respondents have tripped over items in their garages and over 20% say they had hit something in the garage with their cars. One of the best ways to get stuff off your garage floor is with slatwall storage.

After extensive research, the Lehigh Group found that people generally embraced garage storage ideas that “got things off the floor” and “used unused space” creatively as a way to be safer. For example, the space between the two overhead doors of a two-car garage is a perfect place to store that torpedo-shaped car top carrier when it’s not being used. You won’t hit it with the car or trip over it there.

The wooden, metal or resin-based storage cabinets, available at modest prices from the big box retailers like Lowe’s and Home Depot, are still very popular, but more and more homeowners seem convinced more sophisticated systems are worth the extra cost.

Slatwall systems have been hot sellers of late, especially along walls with depth-clearances of less than 12 inches. Slatwalls are panels that attach to the studs and feature grooves where you can place baskets, hooks or shelves. You can then use those accessories to store everything from leftover paint cans to extension cords to woodworking tools. The slatwall pictured here was manufactured by Suncast and receives excellent ratings on Amazon. It’s also the least expensive slatwall alternative we found there; baskets, hooks and shelves are extra, of course.

Bicycle storage is a great slatwall application. Getting bicycles off the floor not only reduces the chance they will fall over and scratch the car, it also minimizes the storage footprint. And, hanging bikes on a slatwall system is preferable to hanging them high overhead on ceiling hooks, as it takes a great deal of strength and coordination to hoist a bike high overhead. Not everyone can do it as easily as they can pick up a bike and place it on a slatwall hook at chest or eye level.

Last, slatwalls allow for easy re-configuration of a space. You may want to make a seasonal change, putting away your gardening tools when winter approaches. Or you may want to shuffle things to add a new item, like when you acquire a new hobby or get a new woodworking tool to add to your other tools. Flexibility is a key feature – one that slatwall systems greatly improves upon over the flexibility provided by fixed garage cabinets.