Metal Buildings

Besides parking our cars in them, we tend to use our garages as storage buildings, workshops, car repair shops, and as our own personal garden center. You’ll rarely see a garage that isn’t multi-purpose, and that’s one of the great things about having a garage - it can fill a lot of needs. When it happens that your garage also stores the family bikes and sports equipment, holds toys and baby clothes, gives your pets a quiet nap zone, and sometimes, even serves as a play area for your kids. All these demands put on one space can lead to a dangerous clash with hazardous materials! So, to keep everyone safe, it’s vital you store and dispose of hazardous materials safely, but sometimes it can be hard to even tell which items are HazMat! To help, we’ve compiled this list of common hazardous items and included tips to help you recognize others.

How to Identify Hazardous Materials

The great news is that the info you need to identify hazardous materials is on each item’s label if you know what to look for. If a label has these keywords, it’s HazMat:

• Flammable

• Ignitable

• Harmful if swallowed

• Fatal if swallowed

• Poison

• Corrosive

• Toxic

• Keep out of the reach of children

• Avoid skin contact

• Caution, Warning, or Danger (in order from least to most dangerous)

Common HazMat Items Lurking in Garages

If you have any of these items in your garage, you can count on it being HazMat, even before you’ve checked the label:

• Coolant

• Motor oil or 2-cycle oil (new or used)

• Washer fluid

• Gasoline

• Brake fluid

• Car wax

• Car cleaners

• Paint or stain

• Stain remover

• Caulk

• Cement

• Fertilizers

• Weed killers

• Insecticide

• Rodent poison

• Pool and hot tub chemicals

The thing is, if you have items on this list in your garage, it’s because you need them, right? You can’t avoid purchasing them, or only get the exact amount you need for a single job. So, how can you keep HazMat items safely away from family members and pets? With careful, organized storage.

High shelves are perfect for storing hazardous materials and you can take it a step further by keeping them organized in bins and baskets by type when possible. Even better? A locked cabinet! That will keep away curious kiddos who are searching for their own supplies and prevent anyone or anything (we all know how cats love to climb) from knocking anything down. The key to storing HazMat items is that you always store them in a separate location from pet and kids’ supplies.

Finally, if you have more than you need and can’t give it away, or you have old materials that need to be disposed of, follow your local ordinances carefully and discard them properly. Some cities even have hazardous waste cleanup days with special places to drop off your items. Whatever you do, don’t dump HazMat items on the ground, down the drain (unless the label specifies it can be), or in your regular trash.

Need a little extra storage to keep hazardous materials separate from non-hazardous? Why not add a VersaTube Utility Shed to your property? It assembles easily and is an ideal storage structure.