People frequently assumed that I parked my car outside in my driveway because I had too much stuff in my garage. If that was the case and I had a desire to park my car in my garage then 5S might be a solution to my problem. But that wasn’t a problem I had.

The problem I had was that my car didn’t fit in my garage. Common response to sharing this with people.

Really, your car isn’t that big.

Trust me, I tried to park my car in my garage and this is what happened:

Given the situation I had three options to manage the problem of my car not fitting in my garage.

1) Buy a smaller car

2) Build a bigger garage

3) Deal with it and park outside

I went with option 3, while still considering both options 1 and 2. It wasn’t long until my garage looked like this:

This worked perfect. I knew where everything was and didn’t spend much time putting things away or getting them out. The system worked.

This Spring I finally came to the decision that option 2 wasn’t viable and hired someone to paint my garage (along with the house). I didn’t want to ruin my landscaping – flower beds, brick paver patio, white picket fence:

Then earlier this month I decided to go with option 1. And this did become a problem:

So I 2.5 S’d my garage:

Why 2.5 S? Because that is what was needed to solve my problem. I sorted, straightened and did a little cleaning. But I didn’t standardize or create a plan to sustain it. And my problem was solved:

I didn’t need to standardize because there is no standard of what needs to be in my garage. And with open shelves it is easy to see what is there and where it is located. The sustaining will happen naturally as long as I desire to park inside the garage because there isn’t room for the vehicle if it doesn’t. And if I decide to not park in the garage then sustaining isn’t necessary.

And as a nice bonus all of the outdoor furniture that was kept in the garage now provides seating in the basement during a tornado or a hot Summer day / night if the A/C isn’t on: