Custom closets can help keep your Annandale, VA home organized during even the most hectic holiday season.

One of the joys of having holiday guests is sharing (and showing off!) your home. Few things are as satisfying as stepping back to admire improvements you’ve made throughout the year with very-impressed friends and family. But as you and your guests settle in for quality time, do you know if your home will have enough storage space to keep everyone’s luggage handy and organized in easy-to-clean areas? And how will you prevent your own family from leaving a mess? It’ll be a blue Christmas if you toss the toys out with the wrapping paper.

Last year a family in Annandale, VA had to get their house ready for a large holiday reunion and decided to opt for a custom design solution. It was an especially exciting project for us to work on, as it included so many important areas of the house at once: the closets, a mudroom, a laundry room, and the garage. Here’s how we helped them get their storage and utility areas ready to accommodate a house full of guests.

Custom Closets Give You Breathing Room

Just down the road from Wilburdale Park, this family asked to have the interior of their Georgian colonial organized to match its tidy exterior. They had lived in the home for around ten years and had never formally organized their closets, so a custom closet overhaul was due. We started with the homeowner’s highest priority and one of our favorite design challenges: the master bedroom closet.

All the closets in the home had dated storage items. It was worst in the master bedroom’s huge walk-in closet, which had so much squandered potential. Our designers found overstuffed drawers that creaked and broken plastic hangers that snagged. The homeowners had spent a lot of money on a beautiful collection of shoes that, instead of being easy to find, were piling up on the floor, which spread tracked-in dirt. What our designers transformed it into was nothing short of a Christmas miracle.

The new walk-in closet featured high-quality closet accessories such as angled shoe racks that made the most frequently worn shoes accessible and featured fancy heels. Off-season shoes were moved to storage boxes up high. Because the homeowners were an active family, open shelving was added for stacking items such as shorts, jeans, and shirts. This made activewear easy to grab on the go. Hooks were added in the front of the closet to keep long, comfortable items like bathrobes and shawls handy, especially on chilly nights and mornings.

Because the houseguests would be staying for at least a week, it was important to give them their own space to unpack in. Our team converted the guest bedroom closet into a reach-in closet set to accommodate the holiday travelers. The new closet boasted adjustable shoe shelves, which came in handy for New Year’s Eve party heels as well as for bedroom slippers. It had a valet rod which kept dress shirts crisp and wrinkle-free. And the slide-out belt and tie racks made after-party undressing for bed a fumble-free affair (even after a bottle of champagne).

Your Mudroom Should Keep You Organized: Coming and Going

The mudroom was the family’s most underutilized space, which many of us overlook. However, a good mudroom can not only keep messes from being tracked into the house, but it can help family members leave the house organized.

The first thing our team did was to install top-notch hardware like shiny chrome hooks, giving the homeowners a place to hang coats, hats, and scarves, as well as double hooks for the kids’ heavy backpacks. Ladies, this is the perfect solution for purse storage; keep it on a hook in the mudroom and you’ll never have to run up- and downstairs looking for it ever again. The new mudroom also had baskets to hold the kids’ Annandale Boys and Girls Club soccer gear and towels for drying off snowy pets. And when the homeowners returned from a night at the Metropolitan School of the Arts with their guests, the baskets gave them a place to keep gloves from getting separated.

A Clean Laundry Room Means Clean Linens for Guests

With such a full house, our homeowners knew they were in for some serious laundry. Our team built a beautiful TFL (thermofused laminate) folding counter that was sleek, modern and sturdy. Plus, it’s easy to clean if you knock anything over, like a half-closed bottle of detergent. The new laundry room received an ironing board that folds in and out of the shelving unit, and chrome hampers with liners that kept each family’s linens and towels separate.

Custom Garage Storage is a Solution, Not a Quick Fix

Finally, the homeowners needed to improve their garage storage spaces to house their radio-controlled drone gear from your local Hobby Works. Parts and equipment had begun to clutter the den and had to be stashed before the guests arrived. We designed a customized storage wall in the garage that held the majority of their hobby items. The cabinets included adjustable shelves that hide their clutter out of sight and heavy-duty steel shelves that hold up to 300 pounds of drone equipment.

The storage wall also got an upgrade with added golf racks to hold extra clubs and bags, as well as gardening racks to hold shovels and rakes for spring. Our homeowners remarked that this was one of their favorite new features, as it meant that storage for the rest of the new year was organized, too.

Organize More, Stress Less with an Annandale, VA Custom Closet

A walk-in master bedroom closet that made putting shoes away as much fun as buying them. A guest bedroom reach-in that ensured no one was late for the H Lounge on New Year’s Eve. A mudroom that kept guests organized from arrival to departure. And a laundry room and garage that raised cleaning and hiding messes to an art form. This, our clients told us at the end of January, was the most stress-free holiday they’d ever had—and it was all thanks to the convenient organization made possible by custom design. It’s a gift we were more than happy to give.

If you’re feeling a bit too much of the holiday stress and are ready to get organized once and for all, it’s time to try a custom solution—one that will get everything in its place, perfectly. Schedule your free design consultation with Closet America today to get started!

Lead image source: Unsplash user Rodion Kutsaev