Garages being used to actually park cars

In My Humble Opinion
41

Related question: My last two houses have been 1950s-era ranch houses, one with attached garage, one with separate garage.

In both cases, the garages are one-car garages and they are really small.

Yet from what I remember, 1950s-era cars were HUGE.

If my 2000 Saturn, which is by all metrics a compact car, barely fits in my garage, how on earth did they get a 1958 Chevy in there? Or a Dodge? And once in there, how did they get out of the cars? In the house with the non-attached garage, we tried to park our 1993 Infiniti in there. The Infiniti was not exactly a small car, but it wasn’t like the cars of the '50s, and it was really, really tight.

In my youth nobody parked in their garages. Ours was full of lawn care equipment and horse stuff, and a couple of steamer trunks full of, I guess, archival garments. My grandparents had a two-car attached garage and sometimes did park my grandpa’s Ford Fairlane in there, kind of in the middle, and then couldn’t close the garage door.

My aunt & uncle also had a two-car garage that was full of tennis racquets, skis, various other sporting equpment, old band instruments, and a Ping-Pong table and a snooker table. Their cars were parked on the street.

In later years, after all my cousins’ sporting stuff and band instruments went elsewhere, my aunt did park there, in a compact car. I don’t think their cars of the '50s and '60s would have even fit; certainly two of them wouldn’t. I can’t think of anyone, when I was growing up, who parked cars in their garage, and I think it was because the cars were too big. So the question is, why did they make these garages so small? Why not build them to fit the cars?

I do park in the garage now, and it’s the first time in my life I ever have. Also first time for garage door opener for me.

ETA: Life hack, I have glued pool noodles to the cinderblock walls so I don’t bang my doors on them. Pool noodles are cheap!

42

I have tons of room to park in my drive or on the street but my cars go in the garage.

In our area for the most part the only cars you see outside of a garage are households with more cars than the garage is designed for.

43

This always confuses me. People will buy $50,000 cars, and leave them right out on the street, but put their mounds of junk (value < $50) in their garage.

Also, it confuses me that people hoard their mounds of junk.

44

Always parked our one car in the garage from early November to late March. During the rest of the year, we had gardening supplies in there and the day in November that I had to clear the garage was traumatic. But the time and unpleasantness of snow and ice clearance and the fact that the car wasn’t ice cold made it worth it. The rest of the year I left it in the driveway.

45

I don’t park my cars in my garage, but my neighbor does. But he bought his house relatively late, and has two kids, and so probably doesn’t have money for accumulating stuff. Weather here is good enough so no problem.
My daughter in Indiana parks her car in her garage, but they have an immense house and a 3 car garage, so enough room for cars and junk.

My house is the first I’ve ever had with a garage, so I’m not even used to parking cars in one.

46

I know about three people with attached garages who don’t park their car there. When I drive around the residential area within a few miles of my house I do not see a lot of cars parked in driveways. I know for a fact my nearby neighbors park in their garage. I certainly do. It’s not because I have tons of storage somewhere else. It’s–why would you have that much stuff that you don’t actually use?

I am surprised at the dramatic difference in experiences on this subject.

47

I have an allegedly 2- car garage; it is, barely. 1 car usually with mower and tools.

I really started using it when I bought my first new car in over 30 years, to protect from sun damage and possible loss of the $300 charger cord.

The outside vehicles get the clearcoat ruined surprisingly fast if outside 24/ 7. And it is convenient to avoid hot, cold, and rainy weather.

48

We have always parked our cars in the garage. Whether we lived in cold places or hot. It enforces discipline to not accumulate junk in the garage.

Our first house was in a subdivision with an HOA. You were not ALLOWED to park your car on your driveway overnight unless you had more cars than your garage capacity.

49

I park in the garage fairly consistently in the winter, though not so much in the summer unless I know that heavy rain is coming. And without fail in the winter if there’s snow predicted.

Aside from avoiding the hassle of cleaning off snow and ice, it leaves the driveway free for the plow service to clear it all off nicely. Back in the day, a heavy winter snowfall meant shoveling the driveway, then cleaning off the car, scraping ice off the windshield, and shoveling some more. Now I just press a button to open the garage door and drive away. :slight_smile:

For those in the southern US who garage their cars because it’s too hot in summer, that works here, too, but it’s also another reason to garage in winter – the car stays warmer (the garage isn’t heated, but is much warmer than the outside) so it starts easier with less wear on the engine in very cold weather.

A nice thing about winter is that I can keep bottled water and soda in the garage near the entrance door to the house, and it stays nice and cool but never freezes.

50

We park in the garage.

51

Must be a regional thing or something. Here in Chicago and the surrounding suburbs, almost everyone I know who has access to one, parks in their garage. Maybe not necessarily every day, but regularly. I pretty much always leave my car in the garage if I can.

52

I grew up in Minnesota, where cars start better if kept in a garage in the winter, and don’t fade if kept in a garage in the summer. I live in a milder clime now, but still have the “that’s what garages are for mentality” – both cars are in the garage.

53

You surely realize, don’t you, that a whole bunch of “less well-off” people live in apartments!?

If you can afford to live in an expensive apartment complex, you MIGHT have a carport. Otherwise, there is no protection from the elements whatsoever.

Nice example of wishful thinking here. No, a garage does NOT eliminate the threat of theft/property damage. Admittedly, it can reduce the threat quite significantly. On the other hand, garages make attractive targets for certain varieties of thieves, because they’re attracted to the sorts of things that are very often stored in garages.

54

I was feeling all smug about having two of our cars inside our garage, then I realized how much stuff we have that could be in the garage but isn’t. We have all of our xmas decorations and luggage in our attic. A tractor, full size extension ladder, saddlery, bicycles, etc lives in the barn. Push mowers, weed whackers, brush hog, assorted tools, shovels, rakes, etc are stored in the shed. All sorts of “junk” is in the shed’s upstairs storage area.

All that stuff theoretically would be in the garage, I guess.

55

I park my tent trailer in the garage, because I’m too cheap/frugal to waste a hundred bucks a month to park it at a storage lot, where it would also be outdoors all the time. I could park a car in the other half, and I sometimes do if I’m expecting freezing rain I won’t want to deal with in the morning, but this is only two or three times per season. Mostly, I use that space as a workshop, and manage to squeeze in three bicycles for me and one for my wife.

My summer project this year was related to the garage:

[ul]
[li]I replaced the door with a high-lift door and a jackshaft opener. The extra overhead space really changes the nature of the garage, and not having an open smack dab in the middle of my ceiling is just great. I can even pop up the tent trailer inside the garage, now.[/li][li]Epoxied the floor. The original 1976 concrete garage floor looked like an original 1976 concrete garage floor.[/li][li]Cabinet storage with a workbench. I ran out of time, but I’d originally designed all of my cabinets in Fusion360, but ended up buying cheap Ikea cabinets. These fill the south wall nearly completely, and my design includes lots of tool storage, cubbies for ladders, a cubby for my compressor and a hose reel, and it just looks like a showroom.[/li][/ul]

The only clutter now is from my daughter’s stuff: stroller, bike trailer, tricyle, scooter, and other stroller. Most other normal household “stuff” is stored in the basement.

56

We have what the real estate folks called a 3-car garage(it’s 30’x 22’), but it has a 16’ door in the middle, so I don’t know how it would work for three vehicles. Maybe if we bought three Priuses(Prii?). We would also have to strip it bare. The walls are lined with two workbenches, built-in cabinets and shelves, and free-standing shelving units. In one corner is a large closet that people think is a bathroom when they first see it, but it houses my fishing rods.

When we moved in my SO put his foot down (our previous, and smaller, garage never had a vehicle in it) and parks his car inside, but my truck stays in the driveway. The rest of the open space is used by my kayaks, riding and push mowers, and sometimes a project that I am working on.

The only times that I wish I was parked inside are when I have to leave the house in the middle of the day and the temp inside my truck could melt lead, but we don’t have to worry about snow or freezing temperatures.

Only one neighbor that I know of parks two cars in his garage, some park one inside like me, but most don’t put any vehicles in the garage. Most of us also have plenty of driveway space though. Mine has ample room at the end to turn into the garage and leave enough space to park two vehicles, plus the +/- 75’ of drive from the road to the parking area. Nobody parks in the road.

57

Of the six closest families around us, 3 park in their garages, including us.

It just makes things so much better. Take weather. The car is never too hot or too cold. Never covered with snow. The windows (at first) are clear and not wet. Etc.

It’s also convenient for bringing things in. Open the door as we roll in, close the door, unload the groceries. Saves some wear and tear on the furnace/AC.

Also, when it’s time to work on a car it’s already in the garage, away from the weather. No fussing with moving crap out of the way.

We have a place for a ton (or two) of junk. It’s called a basement. But the other two neighbors who park in their garage don’t have basements so it’s clearly not mandatory.

58

Two car garage, attached to house.

In it, I park two cars: One daily driver, one hobby car.

Plus yard work equipment, a workbench, a roll-away toolbox, and various other “stuff” in cabinets or any other place I can put it out of the way.

The positive aspects of mitigating the deleterious effect of parking a car in the elements ( especially the sun ) are too many to not use the garage for parking.

59

My 2-car garage has an F-150, Focus ST, Honda Shadow motorcycle, 2 bicycles, and 2 kayaks in it. So yes I definitely park there! I like garaging my vehicles because it makes the interior/exterior finish stay nice so much longer.

But I agree with OP, most garages seem to be used for storage. In FL it seemed like a lot of people would put a screen/mesh over the garage door and use the garage sort of like a covered porch.

60

I think you’re in the wrong thread. This one is about people who choose to park in their garage or not. It’s not about people who live in apartments or other forms of housing that may not have a garage. The OP theorized that OF THOSE WHO HAVE A GARAGE, there is a correlation between wealth and the likelihood of parking in said garage. Jackmannii’s post was clearly addressing that theory.