Page 16 - Julian Marks

Is your garage great or grim?
If you own a garage, I know you will sympathise when I tell you that I recently had the absolute misfortune of finding myself in need of visiting said outbuilding hands-on in my quest to find ‘that food processor attachment that we never use’.
Flung into a box more than two years ago when we moved into the property, ‘the food processor attachment that we never use’ had not even been missed, until now, when it was required in order to complete, in my opinion, an overly-complicated Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall recipe that I was never likely to attempt again and my entire family would probably turn their noses up at anyway.
But I am not a quitter, and so I found myself stood, hands on hips, contemplating the mountain of furniture, boxes, tools, suitcases and assortment of things that fall into the category of ‘let’s put it in the garage just in case’ that we had been steadily stock-piling for years.
You might think I was alone, stood in this lonely world of accumulated clutter, but I can assure you I was not, because you see, a study by RAC Home Insurance found that nearly half of Britain’s 10.6 million garages are no longer being used for their original purpose. That’s 4.6 million garages bursting with stuff that is not motor related!
When it comes to selling a home, the garage is often overlooked – even though it can be a huge asset and something that many prospective purchasers will actively look for when deciding whether to view a property.
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