Ditch Traditional Tool Boxes: The Wire Shelves Idea That'll Keep Your Garage Organized

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Shopping around for custom tool organizers for your garage can turn up plenty of storage and decluttering ideas, but you might find some of the options a little pricey or not quite right for your tools. If you're the kind of person who likes to save a little money with a quick and dirty DIY, then you'll love the idea of using wire shelves to keep your garage organized. By bending old wire shelves into shape, you can create screwdriver storage without spending a dime, and customize it to work for all your small hand tools, such as nut drivers, chisels, and rasps.

You can use different types of wire shelving for this storage hack as long as the wires are close enough together that the screwdriver handles won't slip through. Wire shelving is stout, so you might need to have something to cut it with, such as bolt cutters (which happens to be one of those affordable gadgets worth adding to your garage).

Anyone who uses a toolbox to keep screwdrivers organized knows that they have a way of ending up at the bottom of any drawer or tool chest, and the only time you can find them is when they're in the way. Screwdrivers are the kind of tool that floats around in a large container, but when you give them a home of their own on the wall, it solves a lot of your garage clutter problems. Your small hand tools are suddenly easy to see and simple to find.

One of the most common DIYs to get screwdrivers out of toolboxes is turning leftover scrap wood into hanging storage, but this idea is even easier than that. Using almost any type of wire shelving, baskets, or racks, you can cut or bend the wire so that a portion of it is flat on top, creating the perfect-sized slots for a screwdriver to fit without the handle falling through. When you bend the wire at an angle, the screwdriver rests against the wall and stays neatly in place.

When you're using cast-off wire shelves from a closet system to organize your garage, the gaps along the front lip of the shelf are already the perfect size for many of your screwdriver sets. You can simply turn the shelf 90 degrees and mount it on the wall. If you want to try this but don't have any scrap metal shelves or racks, you can get a ClosetMaid SuperSlide 48-inch wire closet shelf for $10.98 right now at Home Depot.

Keep in mind that whether you're buying a new wire shelf for this project or repurposing an old refrigerator rack, it's important to take a flexible approach (and we're not just talking about the wire). Before you mount your new screwdriver organizer on the wall, you can either cut the bottom of the shelf off so there's not any excess, or you can bend it up and make a small shelf.

When you need ideas for making extra storage for your tools and you don't want to spend a lot of extra money on fancy tool organizers, wire shelves are a great option. In addition to bending extra wire up to make a small shelf, there are a lot of other ways to customize this concept for many of the tools in your garage. For example, you could cut and bend just a few sections of dishwasher racks to create tool hangers or you could use a tie rack to hang wrenches. The hanging-by-the-handle trick works for a lot of different tools, and can be used to organize things like hammers, pliers, and spray bottles. Scaled even larger, the same idea can be used to hang large tools like rakes and shovels.

Small hand tools get surprisingly heavy, so ensure they're mounted safely to the wall, especially if you have a longer shelf. When it's holding a lot of weight, secure it to the studs instead of trusting drywall anchors. You can attach these screwdriver organizers to any wood surface, such as 2-by-4s or plywood walls, depending on what you have in your garage or shed. Touch it up with some spray paint and mount it neatly and securely to the wall, and it's hard to beat the result for the price. And when you run out of wire shelves, you can turn plastic baskets into tool storage.