They are no longer places we keep cars, but elaborate death-traps, where 12 cans of creosote can be balanced on top of each other while dumb-bells, running machines and collapsible canoes are wedged behind broken tumble dryers.
Which begs the question: is it the beginning of the end for the humble garage?
No home-buyer in decades has been able to walk past a house being sold with its own double garage without thinking: 'Well, that would be useful . . .'
As wages rocketed and consumer prices plunged, the desire to buy, buy, buy gripped the Nineties, with the result that cars were relegated to driveways.
When I bought my house two years ago, I was instantly beguiled by its double garage - but not because I wanted to park the trusty family Espace in various spots in it on different days.
Like many men, I had my eyes on turning it into something else. This could be the games room, I pondered. A home cinema. Is it OK for us chaps to have a room dedicated just to drinking?
Of course, logic won out, and my garage was converted to become a nice new entrance hall to the house, plus a side room to store junk.
The Espace is surviving remarkably well without a concrete roof over its head.
In a straw poll of friends, I found that 80 per cent of them were not using their garages to park their cars.
Many, especially those in their 20s and 30s, had never deployed them for their intended purpose. They were using them as guest rooms, bathrooms, even a sauna.
'People are using their garages less and less to park their cars,' says Paul Hammond, manager at Moray Property.
'There are some modern townhouses in both Elgin & Forres, where the house is built over the garage, and owners have turned them into gyms, offices or somewhere to keep a hot tub. It's rare to open the garage door and actually find a car.'
Older properties fare no better, because garages have stayed the same size, while the cars have got bigger.
'Some garages are so weeny that you could drive in, but couldn't get out of your car,' says Paul.
Lee Coan, a 29-year-old journalist from Inverness, converted his garage into an office after giving up his job in London to go freelance - and claims it was a masterstroke.
'When I had my house valued, I found I'd added maybe £40,000 to it, all thanks to my fancy "annexe". So I sold up and moved on,' he says.
Lee hasn't yet got round to tinkering with the garage at his new home.
'At the moment, it's got an old Morris Minor in it and some paint,' he says, but he admits he has grand plans for it, which include the word 'mezzanine'.
He's not the only one with garage nirvana in mind: The Garage Conversion Company (0800 587 0262, garageconversion.com) claims to have done up more than 2,000 garages in the past four years.
The company's speciality is the part-conversion of a double garage: the front bit is retained to load up with oily lawn-mowers and bikes, while the back becomes a useful sliver of extra living space.
The process is, of course, far cheaper than an extension. And yet this rising tide of garage 'reimagining' seems to have bypassed Britain's homebuilders entirely; indeed, the shutters are down.
When I asked, none of the big names would tell me why they were still building garages - which, via some admittedly lateral thinking, brings me to the alarming conclusion that they're all secretly in cahoots with Britain's beleaguered car industry.
How else do you explain a new development by Muir Homes near Biggar, South Lanarkshire: four bedrooms, three bathrooms - and a nice triple garage.
It'll be a laundry room by Christmas, mind. . .
Adios amigos
Mr Jackson.
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