I have two large ladders that take up a lot of room but are almost never used.  They are both very handy every once in a while so I don't want to get rid of them, but I don't want to give up the space either.  I previously had them hanging from the roof in the space between the garage door and the wall, however that space is going to have shelves in it.

I thought about moving both ladders outside and just leaving them by the side of the house.  That space is not used for much and they are aluminum.  However there is a bit of plastic on each, and they will certainly deteriorate in the elements.  I hate to wear them out faster if I don't have to.  I spent some time thinking about ways to cover them outside, but nothing I can come up with is cheep or really space efficient.

I had originally planned on hanging them from the bottom of my new shelfs.  That would be slightly easier to deal with when taking them down.  However I feel this space is going to be premium.  I'm hoping to store wood here, or something else I'm going to access more often.

In casting around I stumbled across this video.  They use a piece of allthread with some pvc pipe over it to make a roller to support one end of the ladder. On the other side they use regular old ladder hangers.  This allows you to take the ladder down and put it back up from one end with only a step ladder. And it can be placed in the fairly useless space over the garage door.

I'm a bit nervous hanging heavy ladders over the top of my cars, but I think with some care I can make this sturdy enough that it won't come crashing down in the middle of the night.  If this works then this will open up quite a bit of space.  

The only other huge space hog are the two bikes I have hanging up.  One is much too small for my kids so I can just pass it on to some cousins.  The other I'm going to hold onto for a bit just in case my daughter wants to use it at college.  However I suspect I can get rid of it in a year or so.  Neither have been ridden in years.