Everybody knows the old saying about how if the only tool you have is a hammer, then every problem looks like a nail. I think the problem might be that a garage becomes the single tool that we use to do (at least) three completely different jobs. A garage is a place to get work done, it's a place to park cars and other toys, and it's a place to store parts and materials. I think the danger is letting these three things overlap too much in the same place.
In a perfect world, we'd have one building dedicated to parking cars and all the other toys we like to ride on. Next door to that we'd have a shop with good lighting and space enough to work without having to move boxes of **** in order to get started. Next door to that, we'd have a room filled with shelves and drawers for storing our rat poison and PVC glue.
Of course, most of us aren't allowed to have three different garages -- but it was useful for me to at least take the approach that no single area should ever have to function as all three of these things at the same time. So I decided my two-car garage was now a one-car garage (sorry, daily drivers), and that all the stuff that would simply be 'sitting in storage' in my garage would go into a shed dedicated to storage. That left half a garage for the tools and supplies I needed to get work done. I can expand the working area temporarily by moving the car out. But I promised myself I would never be moving boxes of books and lamps (and other stuff the wife didn't want in the house) in order to get some work done -- so I built a separate shed for that.
At the risk of posting too many pictures, here's the working side:
With the parking on the other side:
And the storage in the driveway. The overhang part shelters the garbage can here, but it's long-term function is for bicycles/big-wheels/scooters/whatever.
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Honda CB450DX-K
