My garage is nearly empty unless there is a car in it. Aside from the car there are two bicycles, a couple of gardening implements, stuff to wash a car in a little bucket and a few small boxes of spare tiles for by kitchen and bathrooms*.
Soon. My master bath is being remodeled right now so the unassembled cabinets and a shit ton of new tile are in there now.
Short answer: Doesn’t bother me too much, but I rarely find strangers there.
Originally, our neighborhood was a separate entity and owned the streets. The original “founders” disliked the look of cars in the street, and the zoning/covenants/etc. required large lots, wraparound driveways, garages on the back side of the house, and forbade parking on the street. Obviously, there were short term exceptions for loading, contractors, parties, etc.
In the past, a car parked in front of my house could earn a nasty-gram from the HOA, so I was quick to report any offenders.
Now, we’ve been annexed by the city, and the streets belong to it. The city has rules for on-street parking (72 hour limit, etc.) and will enforce those if called. I’ve never reported anyone, but do get annoyed at the constant zigzag that’s now required to drive down my formerly open street. My only serious beef is when a car is parked opposite the end of my driveway. My truck is too long to make that turn using only half the street, and I have to put a wheel into my yard to get out.
My lot is slightly over-sized, and sports a long unbroken curb in front. My next-door neighbor has a construction business, and frequently parks his work truck and trailer there. It’s not a big problem, as we are good friends. Since our new RV is much shorter than it’s predecessor, we can both fit our rigs in that space and leave the driveways clear.
If you have a circular driveway, can’t you back out the other end?
I clicked Yes because of my location. One lane gravel road in a 10 home subdivision. They’d have to be parked in my yard.
Sorry, I didn’t explain the layout well. I probably should have used a term other than “wraparound driveway”. I meant driveways (usually) on one side of the house with a turn to access the rear garage. More like a weirdly curved hockey stick than a semi-circle.
Mine is only barely car wide, but goes all the way past the house with a sharp right turn to enter the rear garage. A car parked across the street but aligned with my driveway is too close to back out (or drive out frontways) without driving across a corner of my yard. I could just bite the bullet and have that end of the driveway widened, but it’s rare enough I just choose to grumble quietly instead.
When I first moved into my house, the next-door neighbors regularly parked in front of my house. It only mildly irked me, because it would kill the grass. Plus they had room in front of their house.
The family dynamic changed, went from just one old man with adult kids coming to visit, they were who parked in front of my house. Then the old man passed, and the kids moved in, had kids of their own.
I’m guessing that now that the third generation is now of driving age it’ll become a thing again.
I am not curious- how did they kill the grass, unless they were parking on said grass?
Yup, parking on the grass. Essentially making the edge of the road extend further. No curbs, just a very small gravel strip between road and lawn.
My street is too narrow for someone to park on without the car being more than halfway on the grass. I have no curbs and dislike having a car on my lawn.
Could you install a curb, or a fence, or a hedge, or roses, etc?
The Right of Way for the street is probably eight to ten feet wider than the edge of the pavement. So the furthest ten feet of my lawn is actually in the ROW. The city would not like me installing a curb on their land. I can’t put a wall or fence in the ROW either. On the property line is the closest I come. So there’s no legal way for me to prevent cars from parking on the grass. But since it’s still visually my lawn, I don’t want them to. Some folks in my neighborhood will put large rocks in the grass right next to the road to prevent parkers, but that’s not really legal.
I would kill the grass within the r/w and stop maintaining it. It belongs to the city. Let them maintain it. Put up your barriers just outside the r/w.
What you describe sounds a lot like the subdivision where I lived as a little kid in the early '70s, in far west suburban Chicago, in a then-unincorporated part of DuPage County. The roads (gravel back then, blacktop now) were barely wide enough for two cars to pass each other, but as there were no “through routes” in the subdivision, there was very little traffic except for residents. There were (and still are) no curbs or storm sewers, and there are drainage ditches running parallel to the roads on either side, probably near the edge of that ROW.
I go back there to take a look at my old neighborhood every once in a while (it’s about 30 minutes from where I live now), and not a lot has changed. The houses all have longish driveways, and 2- or 3-car garages, so it’d be a rare thing for residents to need to park their own vehicles on the street; about the only time I’d see cars parked along the road (and, yeah, at least one set of wheels on the grass) was if someone was having a big party.
That’s how it is for me. In 7 years, I’ve only had a few instances of parkers on my lawn. My neighbor, though gets a few cars on his lawn during his parties. His problem, not mine.
We had one of those back when i was younger- called a “county strip” and the law was you had to maintain it- you couldnt cut down the tree without permission, it had to be watered, etc.
So before you do this, check with someone in authority. A neighborhood association?
Ditto where I was. The city had some combo of easement or right of way over a strip of land adjacent to the road that was curb, grass, then a sidewalk, about 10-15 feet total width.
They owned it, they installed a tree and grass on it once when the area was built, and it was our legal responsibility to care for it forever after. No HOA; this was the city talking.
I get annoyed when people park in front of their own houses. On the street I live on here in the UK every house was built with a single car garage and off street parking for one car (two if they are very short). This probably seemed luxurious when the street was built in the early 70’s but it’s not suitable for 2026. Even where people haven’t filled their garages with junk or converted them into extra rooms, modern cars struggle to fit in them. Since most households have 2 or more cars these days they have to be parked on the street which turns the street into a series of chicanes you have to weave through.
I don’t mind a car that’s there for a few hours, and certainly if I lived near a school I would expect cars every day in the morning and afternoon.
We have a neighbor who has a perpetual garage sale–at least once a month they have a garage sale–so there are cars parked all over as people peruse the wares. Again, no problem.
What irks me is when someone parks right in front of my house and leaves their car for the weekend. We live on a corner lot, and we have always enjoyed the car-free curb, so it is annoying to find a random vehicle parked right in my line of sight when I open the door.
At one point some years back some neighbors were storing vehicles alongside our house on the side street, including at one point a panel truck. I started looking up township ordinances at that time, looking for details on how long a vehicle can stay abandoned, especially with out of state plates, and if panel trucks are allowed–they aren’t.
I imagine they got ticketed because after a month the panel truck was somehow wedged in their drive along with their ten other cars.
And this is why people move into HOAs.
To be pretty confident nobody who’d want 10 cars would move in nearby. And if some fool did, pretty soon they’d be getting harassed early & often until they moved away.
New people moved into a house on our street, but (thankfully) a quarter mile away. They began parking more and more vehicles all over their driveway and spilled out into the street. At one point I counted 15 total, and it turned out the new folks had some type of business bidding-on/selling old vehicles. There were old tow-trucks, a school bus, a bunch of old vans and other oddball cars.
According to my gossip-source, the nearby neighbors were fed up and began calling the city constantly. Apparently there’s a 5 day parking limit in the city, and the vehicle must move at least 1/10 of a mile away. The homeowner was overwhelmed by the requirements to move all the vehicles around to avoid fines. And many of his “acquisitions” were designated as Commercial/Oversize which are illegal at any time.
He eventually gave up and found somewhere else to store them. I was glad, as it was an eyesore and required constant weaving to get around. It’s amazing that people expect their neighbors to just tolerate this stuff.
This was a case where the law worked as designed.