SWMBO Parking - Advice Please

We have a decent sized 2 car garage, shelves down both sides, work bench tools along the front wall. Bikes go in the center. I dearly love my wife, but she has an infuriating habit of parking so close to one side, and pulled so far forward, that either the shelves on her side end being blocked off, or the bikes get banged into the cars. This leads to marital strife. Hoping to avoid it, I'm looking for easy ways to get her to park in the right spot. The tennis ball on string from ceiling is an obvious answer, but would require her to pay attention to it when pulling in...Which is the problem in the first place. Any tricks/suggestions for "subconscious" or subliminal alignment points to get her car lined up right without having to think about it?

Paint some neon yellow stripes on the ground to guide her in?

Make the entrance smaller, so she has to start out centered? Might not help if she's coming in on an angle

My ex loved the tennis ball on a string. She had a hard time judging the spaces so when I introduced it she was glad to be better at parking.

Hoist the bikes to the ceiling as well.

Have her park outside and use the garage entirely like I do.

or empty the garage completely and build a shop/storage space and let her make a mess of whats left.

Other than that you're looking at parking it for her or adding a bunch of parking stop strips/bumps/guides.

If she screws up the parking and you cant access the shelf. etc. Then have her get up and move the car each time until she finally gets tired of this and parks better to begin with.

You need to create an artificially smaller space. Tennis balls on strings,orange cones, something that will mark the boundary that she should be staying in but can still be hit without issue. Start wider/lomger than your end goal and move things in very gradually as she gets used to it. Given time and practice anyone can learn to park properly.

I have used fiberglass bicycle flag poles located in a hole drilled into the floor. Or get crazy and get some car wash style tire guides/bumpers to drive the car into the right spot.

You can get various proximity sensors and light devices for parking cars in garages, but I don't think any of them work any better than the tennis ball on a string.

KyAllroad wrote: My ex loved the tennis ball on a string. She had a hard time judging the spaces so when I introduced it she was glad to be better at parking.

This. You mentioned it in your initial post but seemed like you were dismissing the idea. Tennis ball is a great thing. I used it for my wife too. I had it in a place where it was impossible to ignore, unless she had her eyes closed as she backed up...which sometimes I think she did. I lined it dead square in the center of the rear window, impossible to miss. If you need, hang two or three, from left to right.

Of course, more than once my wife or kids opened the hatch and got the ball stuck, so they ripped it down when they pulled the hatch down...

If she doesn't have any desire to learn how to park better in the garage, nothing you do is likely to help. Considering this, here are a few options in decreasing likelihood of achieving the desired results...

Option 1: Only people parked properly in the garage get to continue parking in the garage. The 'entrance exam' is available one week from last offense or last test attempt. This will either motivate her to want to learn how to do better, or piss her off.

Option 2: Play subliminal messages while she sleeps suggesting the importance of parking properly. This will either make her want to learn how to do better, do absolutely nothing, or piss her off if she catches on.

Option 3: Tennis ball on a string directly in front of the drivers eyes, and just barely touching the windshield, when parked in in the ideal spot. Add a big bright target on the wall/shelving/cabinets directly behind it. Target might have something like a green center for "ideal" alignment, yellow zone for "not bad" alignment, and red zone for "You're going to hit E36 M3!" alignment.

turboswede wrote: Have her park outside and use the garage entirely like I do. or empty the garage completely and build a shop/storage space and let her make a mess of whats left. Other than that you're looking at parking it for her or adding a bunch of parking stop strips/bumps/guides. If she screws up the parking and you cant access the shelf. etc. Then have her get up and move the car each time until she finally gets tired of this and parks better to begin with.

yeah … good luck with that

Maybe 2 tennis balls? Hung so when you're coming in correctly you see only the one. See two and you're off to one side.

Sorta like this:

Buy her a Fiat 500 or a Miata.

GTwannaB wrote: Buy her a Fiat 500

This! Then you will have lots of room

Sine_Qua_Non wrote:

GTwannaB wrote: Buy her a Fiat 500

This! Then you will have lots of room

Because Tony will always be fixing it!

Thanks everyone for your suggestions. I have a couple of super tall traffic cones (which I "liberated" 20 years ago on a college road trip). I like the idea of making these a "gate" right at the door, like Mazdeuce suggested, then a tennis ball maybe centered on the nose of the car. I made a joke last night about it being easier to train a hamster than to teach her to park. My son thought it was hilarious, wife not so much...

Datsun1500 wrote: Cut her off for a week, see how she likes it.

Only guys married a long time understand just how funny this is...

GTwannaB wrote: Buy her a Fiat 500 or a Miata.

No, 'cause then she'll park ever further to the right to give herself 4 feet to open her door. Meanwhile, the right door will continue to push the bikes over onto your side. Nothing changes.

Reminds me of some documentary years ago about how different the sexes are.

They asked guys walking by the Washington Monument how tall it is, and they heard numbers like, 500 ft, 300 ft, 800 ft, etc.

The asked women and heard, "a mile, 10 feet, 2000 feet", I kid you not. What can we say.

(It's 555 ft tall)

Put up a divider then if all else fail.

With regard to the tennis ball... take a red or green sharpie and put a 2" target dot on the glass somewhere in the center where the ball should touch. It still does not work though if your wife does not respect the ball. Mine ignored it for some unexplained reason.

When I go into the garage and the mrs car is blocking the shelves in front so I can't walk by, I back the car out, and put it down the road about 200' from the house. I don't say anything in response to being called a petty tyrant except "It was in the way" (shrug).

kb58 wrote:

Datsun1500 wrote: Cut her off for a week, see how she likes it.

Only guys married a long time understand just how funny this is...

That's the funniest thing I've read all day. (Married 29 yrs).

Don't hang the tennis ball to center on her hood- hang it to touch her glass.

Land mines.

Convert the marital strife into marital bliss...

Determine some of the things that SHE considers important that you ignore (closing the shower curtain, lifting the seat, doing the dishes, more frequent sex, less frequent sex, whatever...) and offer them in trade for parking the car well.

Tell you understand it shouldn't annoy you the way it does, but it does. And promise to pay more attention to the things you do that annoy her.

Then have a merit/ demerit system (white board? suggestion box? quarters in a jar?) that can be used to "buy" the desired results from the other.

She can ask you if she parked well, and if so, she gets to put a star on a white board. If not, you get to take one off. When there are 10 stars, you clean the bathroom.

Sounds stupid, but it worked when we were in 3rd grade.

Woody wrote: Land mines.

I was considering proximity sensors and heat seeking missiles...