Custom Storage Solutions

We get it! It’s back to school season, and suddenly you’ve got cleats spread across your entryway, binders all over your dining room table, and school-issued technology plugged into every outlet you have.

One way you might get your space to feel more like yours again is by keeping it organized. Before Pinterest was taken over by AI slop, maybe you were the kind of person who kept pictures of the best closets you’ve ever seen. Did you drool over Cher’s closet in Clueless?

For me, it is shoe storage. We’re in Western New York, and a good portion of our year has rock salt everywhere. In the driveway. On the sidewalks. On the bottoms of my shoes. Especially the bottoms of my shoes. And guess what happens when I walk through it on the sidewalk and it is on the bottoms of my shoes? It comes into my house. If you’re not from this area of the country, you would probably think “just take your shoes off when you get inside.” HA! A nice dream. Instead, it somehow gets tracked all over your first floor.

But picture this – a mudroom. A drain in the floor. Heated floors! The snow comes right off! A custom-built bench with storage and shoe storage big enough for winter boots. I bet they could hold those cleats, too. The dream!

Or think built-in bookshelves that will hold all your books A-Z, or by color if that’s your thing. Some of them are big enough to hold those cloth cubes, so the kids have somewhere to store all their craft supplies, hot wheels, or charging cables. Definitely tall enough for binders to hang out on. Picture it – your dining room table back!

We want to encourage you to dream outside what your house, apartment, or office currently has. What is the thing that would make your house more enjoyable to live there? What is a problem that needs solving? When you’re in a place to make renovations to your spaces, don’t settle for what’s in front of you. I struggle with this myself, so I talk to professionals, friends, and family. I get opinions, and I look at Better Homes & Garden magazines. I still look at Pinterest. Sometimes I even bust out the graphing paper and a measuring tape and draw my room. No bad ideas in a brainstorm!

At the end of the day, we’ll all feel a little better with a place for everything, and everything in its place. Don’t you agree?