Parenting can be messy—but with a custom-built reach-in closet, your kid’s room doesn’t have to be (at least not all the time).

You may not have a blueberry pie steaming on the counter while your two toddlers nap peacefully in their own beds. You might be dealing with temper tantrums in the restaurant and potty accidents that leave you buried beneath every potty training book you can get your hands on. Your parenting life may not be perfect—but what you can have is something that all parents crave: organization. And with a custom built-in kid’s closet, that’s not even a feat worthy of miracle status.

Chevy Chase is known as one of the best family-oriented communities in the DC metro area—which means you’re probably surrounded by other young moms and dads like yourself eager for playdates. When you’ve got a perfectly designed space to house toys, books, and dress-up clothes (as well as the actual items you dress your child in every day), it’s much easier to keep things tidy. Kids’ closets are often reach-ins that explode with legos and board books. But with a custom built-in cabinetry system, you may just have a chance at creating a kids’ play space that makes the other Chevy Chase moms and dads drool.

Adjustable Shelving Works Wonders for Growing Families

Your kid’s room or playroom probably already has one of those grid storage units with the cube fabric bins trying to wrangle all of their puppets and musical toys—and chances are, it’s not doing the job well. When you build a custom closet, you have the opportunity to design the shelving exactly how you like. You may not be able to change the size or configuration of your lot on Meadow Lane, but you do have a little bit of freedom to change what goes on inside of your suburban life.

Have a plethora of wooden puzzles that you stack precariously in the corner of a shelf? Create a perfectly sized cubby to house a wire puzzle rack for easy access (and even easier cleanup). Reserve a shelf near the top of the closet to save all of those beautiful hardcover picture books that your little ones would utterly destroy if they got their hands on the paper pages. Firsthand experience dictates that “those toys”—the ones you’d pay good money to have magically disappeared entirely from Montgomery County—do best on upper shelves as well.

Determine your child’s reachable zone and adjust your shelving as needed. They’ll have access to the items that you want them to play with for now, and you can adjust the shelves as they pass through each growing stage. By the time they’re old enough to walk to Broad Branch by themselves, you’ll be able to use that space in a totally new way.

Cabinet Doors Keep Messes out of Sight

Investing in a high-quality custom kid’s closet system isn’t really for your toddler’s benefit—at least not yet. This addition is entirely for your sanity, and I can honestly say that adding cabinets to my kids’ closets changed the whole game for us.

I was desperate to find storage for our at-home craft supplies in a way that didn’t make me want to pull my hair out. I wasn’t willing to give up any valuable kitchen real estate to the cause, but I certainly didn’t want to stare at pom-poms and popsicle sticks all day in an open shelving unit—not to mention that I wanted to keep the tempera paint always out of sight and out of mind until I said otherwise. You’re probably just as protective of your Colonial or bungalow as I was of my first family home, and this caution really makes life easier.

Not only are closet cabinets amazing for keeping all of those pesky craft supplies out of sight, they also provide a staked claim in your kids’ rooms that you control. Magnetic cabinet locks are inventions of sheer genius, people. And when you’ve got to keep the Nerf guns out of reach of your naughty five-year-old, or you need a truly safe place to store markers (washable or not), you can lock them away without having to hide them on the top shelf of your own master walk-in. When you head down to Connecticut Avenue for a lunch date with a friend, you’ll have nothing to worry about back home.

See Your Dream Closet Come to Life

Imagine: wire pull-out baskets to house the seemingly endless stream of dirty Lafayette Elementary T-shirts, dual hanging rods with dress-up clothes hanging close at hand for your eager three-year-old, space for their actually dressy clothes above out of harm’s way, and perfect cubbies to arrange all of those endless action figures and Tonka trucks. With a clever design and a few helpful accessories, you’ll have the most organized kid’s closet in all of Maryland. And that, my friends, is a true miracle.

Ready to get started? At Closet America, we love working with kids’ rooms to create the organizational haven that parents are always envious of. Get started on your custom closet design today by signing up for a free design consultation. We can’t wait to help you inspire parent envy across the entire town of Chevy Chase.

Lead image source: Flickr user Kelly Sue DeConnick