A shed typically serves as a storage room for home repair and gardening tools, lawn equipment, supplies, seasonal decor, and other types of hardware that would otherwise make a mess or eat up space inside the house or garage. Ironically, it also has a tendency to be mostly neglected to the point of being a total wreck. And then, finding a specific item from the heap of clutter becomes a challenge. If this is your current situation, you’ve likely committed the grave mistake of not maximizing the vertical storage space in your shed.

While building and organizing your backyard shed, you might have focused too much on ground-level storage. You likely brought in your essential gardening tools, carpentry gear, and other paraphernalia and placed them on the floor. You might have even stacked things up, thinking this would give you more space to fit in newer items later on. Unbeknownst to you, there is a wealth of vertical space on the walls of the shed that could significantly reduce clutter, improve flow, and enhance safety inside the room.

The best way to make the most of your shed is to utilize its empty walls. By attaching wall-mounted racks, floating shelves, pegboards, and hooks, you can transform your cramped space into a tidy and functional work and outdoor storage zone. Think of it this way — the more tools that stay off the ground, the more room you’ll have for the common items you store in your backyard shed.

Adding storage solutions to the walls of your shed is just the start of reclaiming all of the wasted vertical space in this backyard structure. The doors and the ceiling also serve as premium storage real estate. Add hooks and build compartments on the inside of your shed’s door to hang or store all sorts of gardening and hand tools. Just be sure that everyone in the household is aware of this and uses caution when opening or closing the door to prevent anything from falling and causing injury when someone makes a quick trip to the shed in the dark. For larger equipment and tools, it’s best to stow them on the ground or walls to minimize the safety risk that comes with their size. 

For small and sharp objects, like nails, bolts, and other miscellaneous bits, glue or screw jar lids to the underside of shelves, and place the objects in different jars to hang below the shelves. This maximizes shelf space and makes it easy to retrieve any of the contents when you need them. Labeling the jars and all the other boxes and containers in your shed will further save you time and effort when retrieving stored items. Meanwhile, if your shed has a high ceiling, consider repurposing some smart garage ceiling storage ideas. Overhead utility hooks are perfect for long and large items like extension cords, garden hoses, fishing rods, and bicycles to be kept hidden from plain sight and out of the way.