Ask the remodeler: Creative storage ideas for back-to-school season and beyond

Labor Day weekend is here, and that means switching over to school clothes. Where to put all those clothes that are out of season can be a real struggle. In an urban home, space can be tight, and in older homes, basements can be a challenge. And what about school gear, books, and backpacks? Every home is different, so the solutions to storage will be different. The following are a few solutions that we have created with our clients by thinking outside the box.

Mudrooms and storage

Often this is the first place we start when working with a young family with school-age children (and pets). In most homes, we cannot build out a new mudroom space — or if we can, it is very limited space because of proximity to property lines or the sidewalk out front. What we have done in the past with great success is carve out a space near the door and create a half wall for cubbies and storage, often with a bench to encourage kids to take their shoes off and also provide shoe storage below. Staggered coat hooks can be put on the wall if there are no windows that prevent this. We also will put a receptacle in the new entry for a phone or laptop charging area.

Under-stair storage

This is an often-overlooked area for storage. We have installed small powder rooms underneath a set of stairs, and for storage, we have used them in several ways. We have built and installed cubbies with slide-outs or baskets to help organize the day-to-day gear. Since many urban homes have the main stairs by the front door, this makes it a fantastic grab-and-go location. A more involved twist on this idea is to build drawers into the space that would allow more organization, but less bulky storage. We have also put receptacles in these spaces for a charging station or used the space for a more traditional coat closet. This would have us installing a door of some kind which can take two main forms. In some homes, we installed a smooth, flush door with no visible hardware that would have push button openers to access what is inside. This would get painted the wall color and was meant to simply blend into the wall. More often than not, we would install a door that would match the style and trim of the house with the goal of trying to make it appear as though it was always there.

Primary bedroom storage

This is always a challenge since clients often need far more bedroom storage than was ever incorporated by the original floor plan. It is sometimes possible to take an adjacent bedroom and carve a primary closet out of that space. Not everyone has that luxury, however, and that’s when we have to get creative. The second floor in many urban homes has eaves. The eave is where the sloped ceiling connects to a short 3-foot by-5-foot knee wall. If the eave space behind that short wall isn’t filled with utilities like AC ducts, that space can be captured for storage. This can be a little complicated because the space needs to be conditioned, meaning insulated and closed off from attic space above. Once that is done, the space can have open shelving with baskets, bookshelves, etc. We think the best use of this space is to create deep drawers for clothes and linens. That will free up floor space because you would need less furniture pieces such as dressers or bureaus. We have also built wardrobes into a bedroom, typically in an unused or less busy corner. These would be trimmed out to match up with baseboards and casings so it looks like it was built into the space originally.

One of the more interesting projects we had was creating a primary suite in a Queen Anne Victorian. There was very little leftover space after creating a beautiful primary bathroom. Being a Queen Anne, it had a turret in the corner that extended up into the second-floor primary bedroom. The clients weren’t terribly interested in keeping the turret space as a reading area, but also didn’t want to give up the light that splashed through the east-facing windows. Our solution was to fabricate and build custom cabinetry around the inner perimeter of the turret with tall cabinets between the windows and seats with storage underneath the windows. It added a substantial amount of storage without compromising the beauty and architectural integrity of the room.

Mark Philben is the project development manager at Charlie Allen Renovations in Cambridge. Send your questions to [email protected]. Questions are subject to editing. Subscribe to the Globe’s free real estate newsletter — our weekly digest on buying, selling, and design — at Boston.com/address-newsletter.