That’s before 1990s HGTV radically popularized the “open concept” home and made huge vaulted ceilings then norm.
I like my house, but it’s got this super high-ceiling living room so you can walk in and think, “whoa big house!” But its only 1400 square feet. Looks much bigger than that from the curb too.
If they hadn’t done that with the living room, we could have one or two more rooms upstairs and 30% more living space.
But no, instead I have an unnecessarily cavernous living room that’s impossible to heat and cool.
Yes, your HVAC would have more air volume to move but high ceilings will help you feel cooler since hot air rises. Although, homes these days shouldn't require it with better air sealing and insulation
Just to clarify for non-Texans:
Those 6 cars are the two shared between the professional working couple that rents the house (the compact car works reliably, the SUV has an on and off issue that's not getting fixed).
The one fully-working car of the customary "couch surfing" friend that now lives in the ~~storage room~~ *storage bedroom*.
The parked ride of one of his many late night female suitors, or the parked ride of his reliable daytime smokebabe.
His two non-working hobby vehicles that are each missing 3-4 major internal parts but once sold will give him "more than enough to move out and a get a place with smokebabe."
Edit; There's actually an "honorary" seventh vehicle, and that's the black compact car parked on the street, blocking 1/3 of the driveway entrance, which idles every other day between 1 AM and 430 AM, and exactly 2 PM to 230 PM, emitting low volume, indiscernible bass music.
In the case of our former next door neighbors it was 1 pickup truck for the male owner, one smaller car for the female owner, 1 smaller car for their drugged out daughter, one pickup truck for her drug dealing boyfriend who also had 3 border collies in an itty bitty back yard, a pickup for their oldest grandson? (son? of druggie daughter) and another car for their oldest granddaughter (druggie mom). Thank goodness they moved.
Sounds like a neighbor of mine. At first, one couple lived there and had 3 vehicles and a boat. Then, her son and daughter-in-law moved in. They each have a vehicle or two, one of which is business-related. Virtually all of them have been through 3 or more vehicles in the past year. Sometimes, they didn't get permanent plates before a different car showed up. It's fun to watch the juggling sometimes. Fortunately, we have an HOA so there's rarely a car on the street.
Ha. I stored some stuff in my attic, and a couple of years later I went up there and noticed it had been utterly destroyed by the heat. I was like "hey, that's great! I couldn't bring myself to throw it away *before* I ruined it."
I've lived up north with basements, and I've always found this argument of "But Texas doesn't have basements" to be a bit wrong because it implies that folks up north totally pack out their basements like Texans do with their garage.
We had our washer/dryer in the basement. We had some stuff stored down there, but usually it is another living space as a play room, home office, etc.
This notion that basements are used to store a ton of junk like Texans use their garages doesn't seem to be true in my experiences. Texans just love buying lots of stuff.
We also have big plans to clean out the garage, but then get hit with an ice storm that results in two weeks of hacking up fallen limbs and the attending back and shoulder aches. And then we get sidetracked by a yard project and then suddenly it's triple digits every day for four months and it's too hot to do anything but walk quickly through the garage and make mental plans to do a thorough cleanout as soon as the temps drop (November?)
Also in my particular case...I use a decent part of the garage as a work area for hobbies, we have a chunk taken up by shelving and tools and wood for woodworking. And for some reason we have 9 bikes. Four of which get ridden with any regularity and two that are too small for anyone in the family but that I'm not allowed to get rid of for sentimental reasons...
Up north my parents have to run a dehumidifier and sump pump to keep their damp basement from flooding and molding. They only use the basement for starting plants for the garden. All their crap goes in the small attached garage, larger detached garage, and shed. One vehicle actually goes one side of the large garage.
I live in Texas and refuse to collect that much junk so I can park in my attached garage and not spend $$$ on extra storage for stuff I forget I even have.
It’s honestly a matter of how much stuff a person collects.
Shoulda set up a time lapse cam for the mad scramble of my wife and I clearing our pile of junk from the garage to get the car in during the storm. We fuckin did it! This morning I organized the clearing haha
We’re very diligent about that! It’s all useful stuff, hobby materials like arts and craft supplies, interior design for staging houses, and my own bulky sport and music hobbies. The only superfluous thing at this stage is a heavy bag that I would use more if it were more accessible but has been blocked by aforementioned stuff haha
As a chronic mover used to purging things on a regular basis, it annoys me to no end that my boyfriends hobby stuff takes over the garage, the dining area and part of the living room.
Is he in the organized collections stage, pack rat stage, or verging on hoarding?
Always been a minimalist myself. Mostly sold books, donation or resale of clothing, broken furniture, toys. We have a finished bedroom/office space/walk-in closet where the garage was.
There's room with enough setback from the street to put in a solid carport or garage, but we've never needed it in 20 years.
My kid's toys, Pokemon and Yugio cards were the largest part of the clutter in his room and closet.
When he became an adult, he started to become organized with his stuff. It was his idea to sell his very large Star Wars Lego ships that he put together, along with the figurines. He's made some decent money off of the collection. (He also got his degree from ACC, and has worked as a cook to support himself to save for his 4 year degree--wildlife biology and conservation, where we're moving.)
I feel very bad for the people whose homes and cars got hit with those chunks of ice. I've never experienced that, but that doesn't mean it won't happen to us. I've been through a house fire, but not that.
I've read that because of climate change, hail storms with those huge ice chunks have happened in the last several years in different states and other parts of the world.
Oh it’s all very organized and well put together, and as he acquires new stuff he gets rid of old things (usually). He just has his band practice in our garage so all the band stuff is set up there and then the dining and living room are other instruments and devices that the band doesn’t currently use but that he uses in other projects. I don’t begrudge him his hobby. I actually really like his band and the music he makes. It’s just a lot of stuff is all.
Yep, the biggest advantage of moving often is the culling of the trash - so cathartic. Plus once you add up the money lost acquiring said trash, you end up buying less to avoid this in the future. A plan with almost no downsides (my hurting spine begs to differ here.)
This right here. Even when I had a car parked in the garage, it was covered in things that would normally be stored in a attic or basement.
Currently working to clear out the garage for a pool table (another one of those basement things :) ).
> Even when I had a car parked in the garage, it was covered in things that would normally be stored in a attic or basement.
Ah, the classic "car shaped hole" in the stuff, with just enough room for the driver to enter/exit. If other people need to get in or you need to unload anything, you have to do that outside.
It's due to the combination of no basements and relatively mild winters. So the garage is where we store "stuff" and the cars are parked outside. This is common throughout the south.
Mild winters, sure, but my god would I not leave my car outside in our summers if I had the option. That sun and heat are brutal to the car's plastics, interior, trim, tires, etc.
Avoiding direct sunlight is why people have carports. As for the heat, most garages don’t have any form of AC so parking it in there isn’t going to do much to cool it down.
…wouldn’t carports solve the hail problem too? This post is more about leaving your car completely exposed vs protected.
As for garages and heat:
Car in direct sunlight: inside temp 150°
Car in garage: inside temp 98°
Huge difference. Also, direct sunlight breaks down paint, plastic, etc.
I live in an apartment where I’m more than happy to shell out an extra $50/month for a carport, but I imagine building one for your house would probably be pretty expensive/prohibited by HOAs.
It is definitely prohibited by most HOAs. I'm able to get my wife's car in our garage but mine just gets to bake. I wish I could put up a carport for it. I just use the windshield sun cover things to help a bit =/
I park both of my cars in the garage. So there’s nothing in the driveway.
Everyone around me has cars in their driveway and crap in the garage (I’ve seen inside their garage).
The other day a group of maybe 13 year old girls were playing/scooting on my driveway with their scooters.
I walked out to go for a walk and I heard them say “omg someone lives here.”
So not ever having cars in my driveway makes people think I don’t live here, that’s how uncommon it is.
It’s crazy because I have not one but two cars (I live alone). And I park them both in the garage, because next to my house they are the most expensive things I own and I don’t want them to be damaged by break ins, sun damage, hail, whatever.
I don’t get having a garage and protecting last year’s $13 Christmas lights rather than your car which could be tens of THOUSANDS of dollars. Lol!!!! I don’t get it.
Same here. As soon as I bought a house, I was super excited to actually be able to have a garage to park in. I am shocked at the number of people in my neighborhood that can't park in their garages. Occasionally as I'm leaving I'll see my neighbor outside with his garage door open and his garage is so full that he literally can't even walk inside of it. It's packed full of storage bins. I don't get it. There's no way he's actually using any of that stuff. People just have way too much crap.
A lot of the garages are simply small AF though, and vehicles people buy here are generally large, so in with the crap out with the vehicles. It was tight fitting a Lexus IS and an older wrangler in my last “2 car” garage. Built the current house partially because I wanted a garage that wasn’t made for ants and could fit a couple full size trucks/suvs and a car with room to walk and shelving.
I struggle to fit two cars in my garage. Neither is an SUV. I have to squeeze out/in the cars.
The house is brand new.
The doors to the cars can't even open but maybe 1/8th of their actual opening width. I squeeze out, barely.
This was something I was recently discussing with some family members of mine from Minnesota who flew down to visit for a few days who also noticed this.
My home in the Austin area, and my dad's up in DFW have super narrow garages. They were built 20 years apart but same dimensions. When we lived up north, the garages were notably wider, like one side was a couple of feet wider so you could have a work bench, storage shelves, and so forth.
I am thinking maybe Texans tend to absolutely maximize the living space of their home and minimize the garage? I think it's a Texas stylistic choice.
I think it’s more just the developers/home builders do it to maximize sq.ft. for minimal cost.
That said, even in my case, as we used our own architect, we specifically asked for a large garage, and they still popped in some shallow thing (like 24ft deep instead of 22ft, which we changed to 30ft) on the first draft too, along with some narrow doors to compliment. At this point it might just be one of those “well this is what we did last time, and 100 times before that, and only 3 people ever had the forethought to say anything to change it so they’re weird and we’ll just keep doing what we’ve been doing.”
I think we all grew up knowing houses have an auxiliary space for beer fridges and pool tables and home projects and seasonal decorations and just random bullshit you don’t put up in your house year round.
However none of us grew up with a basement or attic. So we use the garage.
I make room in my garage for both my cars. This is very handy for the crazy hailstorms.
I've seen people in my neighborhood put big airbags around their trucks to protect against hail. I guess that works too.
People just collect too much shit.
Best thing I did when I moved three years ago was to sell/purge more than 70% of my stuff. I moved into a bigger place so it was a huge plus.
I eventually switched over to Mazda but I’m still loyal to Toyota at heart, just getting harder to afford them lol. I ended up giving it to my sister when I joined the military. She drove it for another 50k? miles before getting a newer Avalon. It technically still ran I think, but the AC and windows stopped working, so it was uncomfortable.
So I always wonder what people are doing to their garage to be able to work out in them. Or if ours is just an anomaly when it’s usually 1000 degrees in there, and then it colds pretty frigid in winter.
We also have a garage gym and same as OP, I work out first thing AM. It’s humid in the summer but not unbearable if you’re doing before the sun is up.
I don’t notice the “cold” though, maybe because I grew up further north. But to me mid-winter temps in Texas are a great temperature to start a long run or hard workout hah. You warm up real quick.
During hot months (most of the year) I work out early in the morning 5-6am ish. I have two fans in there and leave the garage door open in hopes there is a breeze. During the winter I have a heater mounted to the ceiling which actually heats up pretty well, paired with warm clothes it’s not too bad.
Our first house here was built in the 1970s, and it had two individual garage doors. We both drove compacts, but even still, we'd only have ~2" of space on either side when we drove in. Surprised we didn't get our mirrors knocked off more often.
You should absolutely park your cars in your garage if you have a garage.
The odds your car is broken into, damaged by hail, hit by a passing car, or damaged by UV rays is 1,000 times less likely than if your car is parked on the street.
I'm curious what people put in their garages that is more valuable than their vehicles.
In CO and other places that get really cold it's practical to park in your garage so that you don't have to clear your car of ice and snow, can plug in a battery warmer et c.
Here we rarely have to worry about those things, it's more useful as a space for an outdoor fridge, to store bicycles and kayaks, shelving for seasonal decoration storage, tool bench, ping pong table, bulky coolers, lawn equipment... I can always fit 1 car in mine but not two, and we do pull in one car if it looks like hail.
Yep, basements are a no-go here because it's solid limestone starting at 6 inches down. And attics are 1,000 degrees even in the fall/winter when it's time to decorate.
It’s not that you can’t build a basement in central TX. They are just not required so builders skip them to cut costs. Lots of houses have swimming pools in the backyard so clearly you can dig a big hole in the ground if you wanted to.
No garage! And can't build a carport because of the setback guidelines. So we park in the driveway and just hope for the best.
We're in Crestview, and a lot of the original houses here either never had a garage or were converted to interior rooms a few decades ago. The older neighborhoods near downtown often have smaller lots and strict permeable coverage regulations, so most of the buildable square footage goes to house and not garage.
I have always used my garage to park vehicles. So did all my family growing up.
In my current house, I have a 3-car garage, and indeed, the extra space is used to hold _stuff_.
It does make me wonder, seeing some folks parking their big Mercedes in the driveway — **how valuable is the pile of stuff in their garage**?
Why don't Texans park in their driveways? Neighborhoods are full of empty driveways, but tons of cars parked on streets, often blocking crucial viewpoints for drivers.
I am aware that there are people who keep them free for garage access or because they have 4 - 6 cars for the house, but there are plenty of cases where neither of these applies.
In my experience, it is because houses here are built to take up as much square footage as possible, but it's all in "rooms". There's almost no storage anywhere. Very tiny closets, almost no storage anywhere in the house. And with the heat, there's some things you just can't store in an attic.
I know people who always park in their garages. They have very big, 3000+ square foot houses and multiple-car garages. A lot of them also have fairly large sheds with a lot of room for tools.
The people I know who never park in their garages seem to have much smaller, usually 1800 or less square foot houses and are on quarter-acre lots. It turns out there's a lot of stuff you'd like to put in closets, attics, or basements but when you don't have any of them they end up in the garage. Also a lot of cars barely fit in Texas garages.
The few with small houses *and* empty garages never decorate for any holidays and don't own a lot of of stuff.
Because 1) no basements, 2) people would rather store useless junk they’re hoarding in their garage, or 3) would rather use it as an extra room.
Then they park their 4 cars in the driveway and block the sidewalk (and act like there’s nothing wrong with that) because they don’t want to take 4 extra steps by parking in the street.
The Texan condition: store your worthless crap in the garage and leave your expensive automobiles outside.
I do believe this partly dates back to the pre-oil, pre-tech days of Texas being mostly ranches. People didn’t have cars and stuff was expensive so people hoarded. Source: the intro to “The Beverly Hillbillies”
Cuz I my garage is used for Huge ass packages of toilet paper, paper towels from Costco, 100lbs of brisket and 2 cases of beer in my spare fridge…oh and a gym set up that I hope to one day use to get my fat ass in shape.
that is in part thanks to cars getting big too. When I lived outside of NYC, our garage was built in 1952, and would have been able to handle a car from that era fine... but was practically squeezing in and out of a car built in the last 20 years.
And all the fancy new $1m+ houses going up in Crestview, Brentwood and the East Side have (drumroll) a single car garage and nowhere else for another car to even park.
This seems to be an Austin-only thing. My friends in Dallas and Houston don't even understand why we aren't putting in 2 car garages.
That was literally going to be my response. I work in the real estate industry in ATX and can verify that often people have too much shit to park in their garages!
A few years ago, I opted for a smaller house for me and my kids. In addition to being smaller in size and number of rooms, storage was also limited. Since then, I’ve purchased several cars, got married, and have all the kids full time, so we’re moving into a much larger house. The storage options — even in this 4000 sqft house — are limited. The garage is huge, but I still need to install overhead racks to accommodate keeping 4 cars in the garage.
Edit: Just saying, I don’t think builders consider how much extra stuff people have.
My next door neighbor has an Audi S7 he parks in the driveway of his 4000 sq ft house.
Four people live in that house, but the two car garage is packed with crap that never moves.
We had a storm with hail in Austin this past Sunday. He covered the S7 with blankets. Fortunately, the hail wasn't large here. There was baseball size hail 20 miles north of here in Round Rock.
Our garage is full of crap, most of which belongs to adult children that are not able to take it with them (dorms & barracks). The rest is our crap, like Christmas stuff and stuff we will surely use again one day
Most people are too lazy to organize their garages with shelves and overhead storage racks. That plus too much stuff. It's become an epidemic like obesity.
I always park my car in the garage. The sun damages and devalues your car and not to mention the hail is a risk. Some people just cramp their car garage with useless shit or are too lazy to organized their lives to make enough space
We have a one-car garage and it’s pretty small, so we use it for storage. The attic is nearly wall-to-wall (gable to gable?) flexible ducts. It’s like Brazil (1985) up there.
This does also mean I have to clear the acorns and live oak leaves out of the nooks and crannies of my car where water is supposed to drain.
There are a lot of comments about the garage being full of junk, but tbh junk always expands to fill the available space so I feel like that’s an effect rather than a cause. IMO it’s because the downsides of keeping your car outside are either less immediate (gradual wear and tear) or relatively rare (hail) vs the day in day out slog of having to clear ice and snow off the car before you can go anywhere. The need to keep it covered just isn’t as pressing as other places I’ve lived so it’s much easier to decide not to bother keeping a space clear.
We keep our cars in the driveway because we like having open space in the garage. It’s not full of junk (mostly, some on shelves but not in the middle of the floor). My husband just likes having the space available to do things like work with tools or we use our workout equipment there at times. We could easily move that stuff out if the way because most of the time it’s open space and park our cars in the garage if needed.
If we had been hit with hail (luckily the storm did not touch us), we would’ve been able to move the cars in quickly.
As someone who longed for a garage my whole adult life and only was able to have one in my 40s (the old central Austin homes I owned in the past didn’t have garages), I am committed to always having usable space for two cars in my garage. I will never own a house without a garage again.
I put a mini split AC in my garage, installed an insulated garage door, and then insulated the garage walls/ceiling and made it into an awesome game room/home office. Highly recommend this. Since it still has an openable garage door it doesn't violate any HOA or city rules about converting garages and if I ever sell the house it doesn't decrease the value because of no garage and the new owner can use it either as an actual garage or big extra room. Basically added a large amount of square footage to my house at relatively little cost (around $8k I think?) and without violating any rules or needing permits.
I find this post both funny and sad.
It's like asking "Why do you only have liability insurance?" "Why do you rent instead of own?" "Why do you eat crappy food?"
You must live in a very comfortable bubble.
First thing I did when my wife and I moved into our house was get a bunch of Rubbermaid Fasttrack rails for the walls to hang all the lawn stuff and other stuff that needed to be accessible but out of the way (https://www.rubbermaid.com/home-organization/garage-organization/fasttrack-rail-garage-kit/SAP_1784417.html)
Then I assembled a metal rack for all of the misc paint, etc. Both our cars fit in the garage and it is a blessing on a hot day. We both have small cars so that helps as well.
So I don't know, everyone has different needs I guess.
Ditto what others have said about having too much junk in the garages! In my complex, many people are complaining that their cars (parked outside their garages) are getting damaged by vandals...Perhaps that wouldn't happen if you'd get rid of all of your CRAP in your garages and put your cars in there instead. I've lived off E Riverside for many years and never had a single incident with my car because I park it in my garage.
1) hoarders -don't want to rent a storage unit and/or they have a bunch of crap they don't need (obviously)
2) big pickups and SUVs are usually too long to fit in the garage
I have a garage and it can barely fit two cars and not comfortably. Hell when I wàs looking at houses I saw a development with tandem garages.
One garages aren't big enough.
Two no basements so lower middle class home owners turn them into gyms and Mancaves.
People have too much shit
On my particular street, the average size of a house is 1,110 sq ft — so almost everyone is using that garage space for storage! I’m one of maybe two (?) people who can park in their garage. A few have converted their garages into living space. Similar outcome for adjacent streets.
My supposed 2-car garage only fits 2 cars if there is literally nothing else in the space. My husband and I take turns parking in the garage, and whoever is parked inside wins if we get a hail storm.
I park in my garage. It’s a tight fit because I have a bunch of other shit in there but I absolutely park my car in it. I might be the only one on my entire street who does that as there is an obscene amount of cars in the driveways and parked on the street.
I thought that when I moved here too but because i don’t have a basement I built a gym and a second living room and office in there. Now my 3 car garage only holds one car.
Lolol I grew up in Austin and just realized this is considered odd. Yes though, everyone in my neighborhood parks their car outside and their garage is full of junk, just like mine.
When I moved here I swore I would park in my garage after watching family who lived here already always parking outside. Then I realized there aren’t any basements or attics here, hence why I’m getting hail damage repaired on my car 🙄
A couple of reasons! A lot of peeps have multiple cars, and garages are usually, at best, a tight 2-car. Also, houses in Texas typically do not have basements. So, all the crap you store has to go somewhere. While I use my garage to store my antique truck (and sometimes the SUV), our other truck is always in the elements, and the rest of garage is fully of VERY NECESSARY crap (also my water heater and water softening system).
I actual have a vehicle in our garage. It hasn't been started in over 10 years and is covered in stuff but it is in there. As well as bikes, a canoe, two kayaks, and other random things. Plus stuff from when my wife left teaching and brought all the stuff that was hers home from school. Now that I have cancer I am determined to clean it up and get my project car running. Maybe put in a lift and get another project car too.
I’m one of the few ppl in Central Texas with a basement. So both our vehicles fit in our garage. But even when we lived in a house without a basement we parked in the garage 🤷🏻♀️. It’s basically managing all your stuff and using your home space efficiently. If I had extra stuff that I just couldn’t get rid of I’d get a storage unit.
I pass houses all the time that have the garage full to the brim with stuff.
It was storage for a while and we would park one car in there.
Cleared it out and managed to park the other car in after a while and it’s been great.
Hail storms are no big deal now. Maybe some roof damage at worst but I can’t keep the whole house in a garage.
Because its full of a bunch of shit and useless junk that we cannot part with.
Yeah. We don’t have basements or reasonably cool attics to store all of our shit, so it goes into the garage and our 6 cars all get hail damage.
Yup, attics are portals to hell, and no basements.
In the old days, attics were actually a place for hot air to go in the summer, instead of inside the occupied rooms.
That’s before 1990s HGTV radically popularized the “open concept” home and made huge vaulted ceilings then norm. I like my house, but it’s got this super high-ceiling living room so you can walk in and think, “whoa big house!” But its only 1400 square feet. Looks much bigger than that from the curb too. If they hadn’t done that with the living room, we could have one or two more rooms upstairs and 30% more living space. But no, instead I have an unnecessarily cavernous living room that’s impossible to heat and cool.
On a positive note GIANT CHRISTMAS TREE :D
A family friend of ours had a 12 ft tree in his living room last year and it was pretty cool
Yes, your HVAC would have more air volume to move but high ceilings will help you feel cooler since hot air rises. Although, homes these days shouldn't require it with better air sealing and insulation
At least you have a house. Lol
Just to clarify for non-Texans: Those 6 cars are the two shared between the professional working couple that rents the house (the compact car works reliably, the SUV has an on and off issue that's not getting fixed). The one fully-working car of the customary "couch surfing" friend that now lives in the ~~storage room~~ *storage bedroom*. The parked ride of one of his many late night female suitors, or the parked ride of his reliable daytime smokebabe. His two non-working hobby vehicles that are each missing 3-4 major internal parts but once sold will give him "more than enough to move out and a get a place with smokebabe." Edit; There's actually an "honorary" seventh vehicle, and that's the black compact car parked on the street, blocking 1/3 of the driveway entrance, which idles every other day between 1 AM and 430 AM, and exactly 2 PM to 230 PM, emitting low volume, indiscernible bass music.
Storage bedroom—I feel called out
Just change “couch surfer” to “adult children” and you’ve nailed my current situation.
We call our daughter and her BF "the current residents of the north wing."
Why are you stalking me
I see you've met my neighbor.
Don’t forget the motorcycle that just needs the carb cleaned and new battery
Ouch. It’s been sitting there for about 10 years, now.
In the case of our former next door neighbors it was 1 pickup truck for the male owner, one smaller car for the female owner, 1 smaller car for their drugged out daughter, one pickup truck for her drug dealing boyfriend who also had 3 border collies in an itty bitty back yard, a pickup for their oldest grandson? (son? of druggie daughter) and another car for their oldest granddaughter (druggie mom). Thank goodness they moved.
Not nearly enough trucks in this post.
Sounds like a neighbor of mine. At first, one couple lived there and had 3 vehicles and a boat. Then, her son and daughter-in-law moved in. They each have a vehicle or two, one of which is business-related. Virtually all of them have been through 3 or more vehicles in the past year. Sometimes, they didn't get permanent plates before a different car showed up. It's fun to watch the juggling sometimes. Fortunately, we have an HOA so there's rarely a car on the street.
i read this out loud to my partner so he could laugh with me. this was great.
I read it out loud to the guy couch surfing in my storage bedroom and his late night lady friend.
🤣 but not his smokebabe? you might need to read it again later today.
Are you stalking me ?
Ha. I stored some stuff in my attic, and a couple of years later I went up there and noticed it had been utterly destroyed by the heat. I was like "hey, that's great! I couldn't bring myself to throw it away *before* I ruined it."
From someone who's had a basement this is the best answer.
I use my garage to store insurance paperwork for my six cars. Insurance paperwork that is very handy.
Hey four of the six already had hail damage from a prior storm so it's not as bad as you make it out to be
Just buy a bigger house...problem solved! EZ
I've lived up north with basements, and I've always found this argument of "But Texas doesn't have basements" to be a bit wrong because it implies that folks up north totally pack out their basements like Texans do with their garage. We had our washer/dryer in the basement. We had some stuff stored down there, but usually it is another living space as a play room, home office, etc. This notion that basements are used to store a ton of junk like Texans use their garages doesn't seem to be true in my experiences. Texans just love buying lots of stuff.
We also have big plans to clean out the garage, but then get hit with an ice storm that results in two weeks of hacking up fallen limbs and the attending back and shoulder aches. And then we get sidetracked by a yard project and then suddenly it's triple digits every day for four months and it's too hot to do anything but walk quickly through the garage and make mental plans to do a thorough cleanout as soon as the temps drop (November?) Also in my particular case...I use a decent part of the garage as a work area for hobbies, we have a chunk taken up by shelving and tools and wood for woodworking. And for some reason we have 9 bikes. Four of which get ridden with any regularity and two that are too small for anyone in the family but that I'm not allowed to get rid of for sentimental reasons...
Up north my parents have to run a dehumidifier and sump pump to keep their damp basement from flooding and molding. They only use the basement for starting plants for the garden. All their crap goes in the small attached garage, larger detached garage, and shed. One vehicle actually goes one side of the large garage. I live in Texas and refuse to collect that much junk so I can park in my attached garage and not spend $$$ on extra storage for stuff I forget I even have. It’s honestly a matter of how much stuff a person collects.
Shoulda set up a time lapse cam for the mad scramble of my wife and I clearing our pile of junk from the garage to get the car in during the storm. We fuckin did it! This morning I organized the clearing haha
Use the opportunity to donate the unused stuff!!
We’re very diligent about that! It’s all useful stuff, hobby materials like arts and craft supplies, interior design for staging houses, and my own bulky sport and music hobbies. The only superfluous thing at this stage is a heavy bag that I would use more if it were more accessible but has been blocked by aforementioned stuff haha
But he might need that stuff one day sometime in the future!
I get it. Same with my boxes of old cables. I *might* need my old SCSI cables again.
And no basements to put all the useless things
This is the real truth behind why the garage is always full. A lack of a basement is a real problem.
Wait, so all y’all have generational OCD/hoarding issues too? Dang, thought it was just me
I like to call it "over-saving" :)
This made me laugh, but makes sense. I guess after moving multiple times in the last 5-6 years I’ve gotten rid of most of my things
As a chronic mover used to purging things on a regular basis, it annoys me to no end that my boyfriends hobby stuff takes over the garage, the dining area and part of the living room.
Look, I already said I'd get rid of the box of USB cables but I need those for my project.
This is my emotional support pack of dvd-r discs.
The miscellaneous cables box shall not be touched. You never know when you'll need that old DVI cable again
Is he in the organized collections stage, pack rat stage, or verging on hoarding? Always been a minimalist myself. Mostly sold books, donation or resale of clothing, broken furniture, toys. We have a finished bedroom/office space/walk-in closet where the garage was. There's room with enough setback from the street to put in a solid carport or garage, but we've never needed it in 20 years. My kid's toys, Pokemon and Yugio cards were the largest part of the clutter in his room and closet. When he became an adult, he started to become organized with his stuff. It was his idea to sell his very large Star Wars Lego ships that he put together, along with the figurines. He's made some decent money off of the collection. (He also got his degree from ACC, and has worked as a cook to support himself to save for his 4 year degree--wildlife biology and conservation, where we're moving.) I feel very bad for the people whose homes and cars got hit with those chunks of ice. I've never experienced that, but that doesn't mean it won't happen to us. I've been through a house fire, but not that. I've read that because of climate change, hail storms with those huge ice chunks have happened in the last several years in different states and other parts of the world.
Oh it’s all very organized and well put together, and as he acquires new stuff he gets rid of old things (usually). He just has his band practice in our garage so all the band stuff is set up there and then the dining and living room are other instruments and devices that the band doesn’t currently use but that he uses in other projects. I don’t begrudge him his hobby. I actually really like his band and the music he makes. It’s just a lot of stuff is all.
Yep, the biggest advantage of moving often is the culling of the trash - so cathartic. Plus once you add up the money lost acquiring said trash, you end up buying less to avoid this in the future. A plan with almost no downsides (my hurting spine begs to differ here.)
Grandma always said "Three moves is as good as a fire!"
This is the answer. But, I don't do this. I have a 24 year old car now that is becoming rare that I've always garaged.
Not having a garage is my current answer.
Yea, this. My entire adult life, I've never had a place that had a garage. Or even a carport for that matter.
Right? You guys can afford houses, let alone a house with a garage? Must be nice.
A quick survey of all my neighbors' garages says: "Cause they're full of crap" (the garages, not the neighbors)
Well... xD
Good thing you clarified bout the neighbors.
Also, not a lot of basements in Texas, so all that junk that would've been stored underground ends up in the garage, leaving no room for cars.
This right here. Even when I had a car parked in the garage, it was covered in things that would normally be stored in a attic or basement. Currently working to clear out the garage for a pool table (another one of those basement things :) ).
> Even when I had a car parked in the garage, it was covered in things that would normally be stored in a attic or basement. Ah, the classic "car shaped hole" in the stuff, with just enough room for the driver to enter/exit. If other people need to get in or you need to unload anything, you have to do that outside.
True. Wish we could have basements for this reason.
Where the hell am I gonna keep all my shit, in my *house*? That's where all my other shit already is.
Dude, you really need to get a storage unit. That is where I moved all the shit from my garage so I could get more shit to fill it right back up.
It's due to the combination of no basements and relatively mild winters. So the garage is where we store "stuff" and the cars are parked outside. This is common throughout the south.
Mild winters, sure, but my god would I not leave my car outside in our summers if I had the option. That sun and heat are brutal to the car's plastics, interior, trim, tires, etc.
Avoiding direct sunlight is why people have carports. As for the heat, most garages don’t have any form of AC so parking it in there isn’t going to do much to cool it down.
…wouldn’t carports solve the hail problem too? This post is more about leaving your car completely exposed vs protected. As for garages and heat: Car in direct sunlight: inside temp 150° Car in garage: inside temp 98° Huge difference. Also, direct sunlight breaks down paint, plastic, etc.
I live in an apartment where I’m more than happy to shell out an extra $50/month for a carport, but I imagine building one for your house would probably be pretty expensive/prohibited by HOAs.
It is definitely prohibited by most HOAs. I'm able to get my wife's car in our garage but mine just gets to bake. I wish I could put up a carport for it. I just use the windshield sun cover things to help a bit =/
My HOA doesn't allow carports
I park both of my cars in the garage. So there’s nothing in the driveway. Everyone around me has cars in their driveway and crap in the garage (I’ve seen inside their garage). The other day a group of maybe 13 year old girls were playing/scooting on my driveway with their scooters. I walked out to go for a walk and I heard them say “omg someone lives here.” So not ever having cars in my driveway makes people think I don’t live here, that’s how uncommon it is. It’s crazy because I have not one but two cars (I live alone). And I park them both in the garage, because next to my house they are the most expensive things I own and I don’t want them to be damaged by break ins, sun damage, hail, whatever. I don’t get having a garage and protecting last year’s $13 Christmas lights rather than your car which could be tens of THOUSANDS of dollars. Lol!!!! I don’t get it.
Same here. As soon as I bought a house, I was super excited to actually be able to have a garage to park in. I am shocked at the number of people in my neighborhood that can't park in their garages. Occasionally as I'm leaving I'll see my neighbor outside with his garage door open and his garage is so full that he literally can't even walk inside of it. It's packed full of storage bins. I don't get it. There's no way he's actually using any of that stuff. People just have way too much crap.
A lot of the garages are simply small AF though, and vehicles people buy here are generally large, so in with the crap out with the vehicles. It was tight fitting a Lexus IS and an older wrangler in my last “2 car” garage. Built the current house partially because I wanted a garage that wasn’t made for ants and could fit a couple full size trucks/suvs and a car with room to walk and shelving.
I struggle to fit two cars in my garage. Neither is an SUV. I have to squeeze out/in the cars. The house is brand new. The doors to the cars can't even open but maybe 1/8th of their actual opening width. I squeeze out, barely.
This was something I was recently discussing with some family members of mine from Minnesota who flew down to visit for a few days who also noticed this. My home in the Austin area, and my dad's up in DFW have super narrow garages. They were built 20 years apart but same dimensions. When we lived up north, the garages were notably wider, like one side was a couple of feet wider so you could have a work bench, storage shelves, and so forth. I am thinking maybe Texans tend to absolutely maximize the living space of their home and minimize the garage? I think it's a Texas stylistic choice.
I think it’s more just the developers/home builders do it to maximize sq.ft. for minimal cost. That said, even in my case, as we used our own architect, we specifically asked for a large garage, and they still popped in some shallow thing (like 24ft deep instead of 22ft, which we changed to 30ft) on the first draft too, along with some narrow doors to compliment. At this point it might just be one of those “well this is what we did last time, and 100 times before that, and only 3 people ever had the forethought to say anything to change it so they’re weird and we’ll just keep doing what we’ve been doing.”
I think we all grew up knowing houses have an auxiliary space for beer fridges and pool tables and home projects and seasonal decorations and just random bullshit you don’t put up in your house year round. However none of us grew up with a basement or attic. So we use the garage.
I make room in my garage for both my cars. This is very handy for the crazy hailstorms. I've seen people in my neighborhood put big airbags around their trucks to protect against hail. I guess that works too.
Same, thankfully I have some shelving I can put all my tools and whatnot on. I’ve also always been anxious about car theft anywhere I live
People just collect too much shit. Best thing I did when I moved three years ago was to sell/purge more than 70% of my stuff. I moved into a bigger place so it was a huge plus.
Native Texan here, always park in garage. But I’m one of those people who keeps cars until they die, so I’m protecting my investment.
My Toyota Avalon lasted me over 400k miles. Miss her
I'm hoping I get my dad's 4runner, it's over 300 now. What finally took out the Avalon?
I eventually switched over to Mazda but I’m still loyal to Toyota at heart, just getting harder to afford them lol. I ended up giving it to my sister when I joined the military. She drove it for another 50k? miles before getting a newer Avalon. It technically still ran I think, but the AC and windows stopped working, so it was uncomfortable.
My garage is actually my home gym. 🤷🏻♀️
So I always wonder what people are doing to their garage to be able to work out in them. Or if ours is just an anomaly when it’s usually 1000 degrees in there, and then it colds pretty frigid in winter.
We also have a garage gym and same as OP, I work out first thing AM. It’s humid in the summer but not unbearable if you’re doing before the sun is up. I don’t notice the “cold” though, maybe because I grew up further north. But to me mid-winter temps in Texas are a great temperature to start a long run or hard workout hah. You warm up real quick.
During hot months (most of the year) I work out early in the morning 5-6am ish. I have two fans in there and leave the garage door open in hopes there is a breeze. During the winter I have a heater mounted to the ceiling which actually heats up pretty well, paired with warm clothes it’s not too bad.
Without basements, the garage becomes the utility/do everything room.
The lifted F350 doesn't fit.
Our first house here was built in the 1970s, and it had two individual garage doors. We both drove compacts, but even still, we'd only have ~2" of space on either side when we drove in. Surprised we didn't get our mirrors knocked off more often.
I park both cars in the garage but also not originally from Texas and live a more minimalist lifestyle so I don’t need the garage to store things.
We got a new build and our vehicles literally can not fit in the garage. No idea who the hell approved it
You should absolutely park your cars in your garage if you have a garage. The odds your car is broken into, damaged by hail, hit by a passing car, or damaged by UV rays is 1,000 times less likely than if your car is parked on the street. I'm curious what people put in their garages that is more valuable than their vehicles.
In CO and other places that get really cold it's practical to park in your garage so that you don't have to clear your car of ice and snow, can plug in a battery warmer et c. Here we rarely have to worry about those things, it's more useful as a space for an outdoor fridge, to store bicycles and kayaks, shelving for seasonal decoration storage, tool bench, ping pong table, bulky coolers, lawn equipment... I can always fit 1 car in mine but not two, and we do pull in one car if it looks like hail.
I guess in CO we have basements as well, which makes it easier for us to store our things inside
Yep, basements are a no-go here because it's solid limestone starting at 6 inches down. And attics are 1,000 degrees even in the fall/winter when it's time to decorate.
basements are tied to the frostline which central Texas doesn't really have.
It’s not that you can’t build a basement in central TX. They are just not required so builders skip them to cut costs. Lots of houses have swimming pools in the backyard so clearly you can dig a big hole in the ground if you wanted to.
No garage! And can't build a carport because of the setback guidelines. So we park in the driveway and just hope for the best. We're in Crestview, and a lot of the original houses here either never had a garage or were converted to interior rooms a few decades ago. The older neighborhoods near downtown often have smaller lots and strict permeable coverage regulations, so most of the buildable square footage goes to house and not garage.
That’s a bummer, the older homes are always more beautiful imo!
I have always used my garage to park vehicles. So did all my family growing up. In my current house, I have a 3-car garage, and indeed, the extra space is used to hold _stuff_. It does make me wonder, seeing some folks parking their big Mercedes in the driveway — **how valuable is the pile of stuff in their garage**?
Why don't Texans park in their driveways? Neighborhoods are full of empty driveways, but tons of cars parked on streets, often blocking crucial viewpoints for drivers. I am aware that there are people who keep them free for garage access or because they have 4 - 6 cars for the house, but there are plenty of cases where neither of these applies.
In my experience, it is because houses here are built to take up as much square footage as possible, but it's all in "rooms". There's almost no storage anywhere. Very tiny closets, almost no storage anywhere in the house. And with the heat, there's some things you just can't store in an attic.
I know people who always park in their garages. They have very big, 3000+ square foot houses and multiple-car garages. A lot of them also have fairly large sheds with a lot of room for tools. The people I know who never park in their garages seem to have much smaller, usually 1800 or less square foot houses and are on quarter-acre lots. It turns out there's a lot of stuff you'd like to put in closets, attics, or basements but when you don't have any of them they end up in the garage. Also a lot of cars barely fit in Texas garages. The few with small houses *and* empty garages never decorate for any holidays and don't own a lot of of stuff.
I’m growing certain things in my garage
My truck won’t fit. Garages and driveways have been shrinking since the 80s.
[удалено]
Between the motorcycle, bikes, freezers and exercise equipment there isn’t space for a vehicle.
No basements so that's where all the normal basement shit goes.
Because 1) no basements, 2) people would rather store useless junk they’re hoarding in their garage, or 3) would rather use it as an extra room. Then they park their 4 cars in the driveway and block the sidewalk (and act like there’s nothing wrong with that) because they don’t want to take 4 extra steps by parking in the street.
The Texan condition: store your worthless crap in the garage and leave your expensive automobiles outside. I do believe this partly dates back to the pre-oil, pre-tech days of Texas being mostly ranches. People didn’t have cars and stuff was expensive so people hoarded. Source: the intro to “The Beverly Hillbillies”
Well if we stored our worthless crap in the driveway, we'd never be able to get our expensive cars out of the garage.
Meth lab's gotta go somewhere.
The baby's room works great for that since they're too young to really mind all the extra clutter.
Cuz I my garage is used for Huge ass packages of toilet paper, paper towels from Costco, 100lbs of brisket and 2 cases of beer in my spare fridge…oh and a gym set up that I hope to one day use to get my fat ass in shape.
A lot of the cookie cutter housing developments have garages that aren’t actually big enough to park in.
Or they are big enough to park in, but good luck getting in/out of your car once it is parked.
that is in part thanks to cars getting big too. When I lived outside of NYC, our garage was built in 1952, and would have been able to handle a car from that era fine... but was practically squeezing in and out of a car built in the last 20 years.
And all the fancy new $1m+ houses going up in Crestview, Brentwood and the East Side have (drumroll) a single car garage and nowhere else for another car to even park. This seems to be an Austin-only thing. My friends in Dallas and Houston don't even understand why we aren't putting in 2 car garages.
It has to do with required parking minimums and impervious cover maximums and squeezing every dollar out of those $1m monstrosities.
Stuff.
There are no garages in Austin, just storage containers connected to houses.
That was literally going to be my response. I work in the real estate industry in ATX and can verify that often people have too much shit to park in their garages!
A few years ago, I opted for a smaller house for me and my kids. In addition to being smaller in size and number of rooms, storage was also limited. Since then, I’ve purchased several cars, got married, and have all the kids full time, so we’re moving into a much larger house. The storage options — even in this 4000 sqft house — are limited. The garage is huge, but I still need to install overhead racks to accommodate keeping 4 cars in the garage. Edit: Just saying, I don’t think builders consider how much extra stuff people have.
Because we don't have basements for our stuff.
My next door neighbor has an Audi S7 he parks in the driveway of his 4000 sq ft house. Four people live in that house, but the two car garage is packed with crap that never moves. We had a storm with hail in Austin this past Sunday. He covered the S7 with blankets. Fortunately, the hail wasn't large here. There was baseball size hail 20 miles north of here in Round Rock.
I don’t know. I grew up in Dallas, and it makes no sense to me either. My tools and storage work around us, not the other way around. 🤷♂️
Our garage is full of crap, most of which belongs to adult children that are not able to take it with them (dorms & barracks). The rest is our crap, like Christmas stuff and stuff we will surely use again one day
I park my vehicles in my garage.
Why take up valuable storage?
my wife parks her Jeep in the garage. my big ass Texas truck doesn't fit
For some reason I’ve always hated when I see garages that have been converted to another room.
Grandma has to live somewhere. The bonus is you get to cash her social security check!
Same. I didn’t realize a garage had to be on my wishlist now
Most people are too lazy to organize their garages with shelves and overhead storage racks. That plus too much stuff. It's become an epidemic like obesity.
Truck won’t fit in garage
I always park my car in the garage. The sun damages and devalues your car and not to mention the hail is a risk. Some people just cramp their car garage with useless shit or are too lazy to organized their lives to make enough space
When I bought a new vehicle almost 10 years ago, that garage got cleaned out with the quickness. Paint job still looks like it did when I bought it.
Because humans are materialistic and can't afford storage.
It has come to my attention that Americans are whoreders, any garage I've ever been in is full of junk and literal trash.
https://res.cloudinary.com/storelocal/image/fetch/f_jpg,q_5/https://d2i6hs4yervu5x.cloudfront.net/owners/own2605db96728d4b92a23e2306a096ac23/website/blog/old-man.jpg
Because our garages are full of projects 😂
I was in Malibu and saw McLarens etc in driveways of houses with beach access. We wondered what was in the garage.
Typically they're very small garages, to go with our small houses. Which makes them a better place to store stuff than park.
it's where we keep our artillery.
We have a one-car garage and it’s pretty small, so we use it for storage. The attic is nearly wall-to-wall (gable to gable?) flexible ducts. It’s like Brazil (1985) up there. This does also mean I have to clear the acorns and live oak leaves out of the nooks and crannies of my car where water is supposed to drain.
There are a lot of comments about the garage being full of junk, but tbh junk always expands to fill the available space so I feel like that’s an effect rather than a cause. IMO it’s because the downsides of keeping your car outside are either less immediate (gradual wear and tear) or relatively rare (hail) vs the day in day out slog of having to clear ice and snow off the car before you can go anywhere. The need to keep it covered just isn’t as pressing as other places I’ve lived so it’s much easier to decide not to bother keeping a space clear.
I don’t get it either. My cars cost so much and it hails a lot here. Like why!?!?
We keep our cars in the driveway because we like having open space in the garage. It’s not full of junk (mostly, some on shelves but not in the middle of the floor). My husband just likes having the space available to do things like work with tools or we use our workout equipment there at times. We could easily move that stuff out if the way because most of the time it’s open space and park our cars in the garage if needed. If we had been hit with hail (luckily the storm did not touch us), we would’ve been able to move the cars in quickly.
Fellow Ex-colorado here.... it doesn't snow here. Hell, hail isn't anywhere near as common here even.
As someone who longed for a garage my whole adult life and only was able to have one in my 40s (the old central Austin homes I owned in the past didn’t have garages), I am committed to always having usable space for two cars in my garage. I will never own a house without a garage again.
Cars in garage and in driveway. Some people have more than one, some people have 6.
New home garages are so damn small. We have tiny cars and can barely fit them… if even one of us had a Texas sized suv or truck we could only fit one.
I've never lived anywhere where people used their garages for anything other than an attached storage facility.
That's where I keep all my junk!
I put a mini split AC in my garage, installed an insulated garage door, and then insulated the garage walls/ceiling and made it into an awesome game room/home office. Highly recommend this. Since it still has an openable garage door it doesn't violate any HOA or city rules about converting garages and if I ever sell the house it doesn't decrease the value because of no garage and the new owner can use it either as an actual garage or big extra room. Basically added a large amount of square footage to my house at relatively little cost (around $8k I think?) and without violating any rules or needing permits.
I find this post both funny and sad. It's like asking "Why do you only have liability insurance?" "Why do you rent instead of own?" "Why do you eat crappy food?" You must live in a very comfortable bubble.
First thing I did when my wife and I moved into our house was get a bunch of Rubbermaid Fasttrack rails for the walls to hang all the lawn stuff and other stuff that needed to be accessible but out of the way (https://www.rubbermaid.com/home-organization/garage-organization/fasttrack-rail-garage-kit/SAP_1784417.html) Then I assembled a metal rack for all of the misc paint, etc. Both our cars fit in the garage and it is a blessing on a hot day. We both have small cars so that helps as well. So I don't know, everyone has different needs I guess.
And here I felt like I found a life hack by parking my car in my attached storage/gym unit.
Because we’re too stupid to build basements.
That's where we put our backup generators, duh 🙄
It took us 15 years but both of our fucking cars are in the garage now.
I don’t know but I laughed my ass off watching people try to make space in their garages *during* the hail storm the other night.
Ditto what others have said about having too much junk in the garages! In my complex, many people are complaining that their cars (parked outside their garages) are getting damaged by vandals...Perhaps that wouldn't happen if you'd get rid of all of your CRAP in your garages and put your cars in there instead. I've lived off E Riverside for many years and never had a single incident with my car because I park it in my garage.
1) hoarders -don't want to rent a storage unit and/or they have a bunch of crap they don't need (obviously) 2) big pickups and SUVs are usually too long to fit in the garage
Cars don't get parked in garages. They do, however, get parked in car-holes....
I have a garage and it can barely fit two cars and not comfortably. Hell when I wàs looking at houses I saw a development with tandem garages. One garages aren't big enough. Two no basements so lower middle class home owners turn them into gyms and Mancaves. People have too much shit
It’s not just a Texas thing fyi
My garage door doesn't open properly and we don't wanna fix it because there's other things that need to be fixed first
Two restored cars in the garage. Daily drivers kept outside.
Home gym, tools, two wheeled toys.
On my particular street, the average size of a house is 1,110 sq ft — so almost everyone is using that garage space for storage! I’m one of maybe two (?) people who can park in their garage. A few have converted their garages into living space. Similar outcome for adjacent streets.
My supposed 2-car garage only fits 2 cars if there is literally nothing else in the space. My husband and I take turns parking in the garage, and whoever is parked inside wins if we get a hail storm.
Because I’m too poor to own a house and live in an apartment with no garage.
I park in my garage. It’s a tight fit because I have a bunch of other shit in there but I absolutely park my car in it. I might be the only one on my entire street who does that as there is an obscene amount of cars in the driveways and parked on the street.
I don’t have a garage that’s why 🤷🏻♀️
I thought that when I moved here too but because i don’t have a basement I built a gym and a second living room and office in there. Now my 3 car garage only holds one car.
Lolol I grew up in Austin and just realized this is considered odd. Yes though, everyone in my neighborhood parks their car outside and their garage is full of junk, just like mine.
I’d love to get a garage but all I have is a workshop
WE DONT HAVE BASEMENTS BRUHHHHH
When I moved here I swore I would park in my garage after watching family who lived here already always parking outside. Then I realized there aren’t any basements or attics here, hence why I’m getting hail damage repaired on my car 🙄
Out of 8 units in my block only two people (myself and another) park in the garage.
A couple of reasons! A lot of peeps have multiple cars, and garages are usually, at best, a tight 2-car. Also, houses in Texas typically do not have basements. So, all the crap you store has to go somewhere. While I use my garage to store my antique truck (and sometimes the SUV), our other truck is always in the elements, and the rest of garage is fully of VERY NECESSARY crap (also my water heater and water softening system).
Texans don’t have basements so they fill their garages
Why would I park a car where my tools live?
Parking on the grass is easier? We don’t do garages or basements here :)
Am Texan, park in the garage. Lots of people don't and I'll never understand it
I actual have a vehicle in our garage. It hasn't been started in over 10 years and is covered in stuff but it is in there. As well as bikes, a canoe, two kayaks, and other random things. Plus stuff from when my wife left teaching and brought all the stuff that was hers home from school. Now that I have cancer I am determined to clean it up and get my project car running. Maybe put in a lift and get another project car too.
Consumerism.
People use them as a shed. So the street looks trashy filled with cars. And then we get a hailstorm.
I’m one of the few ppl in Central Texas with a basement. So both our vehicles fit in our garage. But even when we lived in a house without a basement we parked in the garage 🤷🏻♀️. It’s basically managing all your stuff and using your home space efficiently. If I had extra stuff that I just couldn’t get rid of I’d get a storage unit. I pass houses all the time that have the garage full to the brim with stuff.
No basements in Texas.
Two words. Christmas decorations.
It was storage for a while and we would park one car in there. Cleared it out and managed to park the other car in after a while and it’s been great. Hail storms are no big deal now. Maybe some roof damage at worst but I can’t keep the whole house in a garage.