Royal Palm Beach, FL custom closets and home organization

Royal Palm Beach started as part of a much larger land purchase. In the early 1950s, Sam Friedland, founder of the Food Fair grocery chain, bought land in western Palm Beach County and later sold 4,200 acres to Lefcourt Realty of Miami, which incorporated it as the Village of Royal Palm Beach in 1959. When Lefcourt went bankrupt in 1961, Friedland formed Royal Palm Beach Colony to keep the project going. By 1967 the village had a golf course, a lake, paved roads and platted home sites. Building spread out from the south end of Royal Palm Beach Boulevard, first east and then west, from the original Colony section with its floral street names to subdivisions such as the Willows and LaMancha. Growth peaked in the 1980s.

The Census Bureau's housing estimates show that history. About a third of today's homes were built in the 1980s and another three in ten in the 2000s, for a median build year of 1990. Roughly two-thirds are detached houses and about one in six are townhouses or other attached homes, and more than four in five occupied homes are lived in by their owners.

If your kitchen has one pantry closet with a few fixed shelves, a custom pantry system puts it to work with adjustable shelving at the right heights for cans, cereal boxes and small appliances, plus drawers or baskets for snacks. Deep corner shelves are where food gets lost, and a Lazy Lee rotating unit brings the back of the corner around to the front with a turn.

The laundry room can get the same treatment. Cabinets above the washer and dryer, a folding surface and a spot for hanging clothes keep laundry from piling up on the machines, whether the laundry is in a utility room or in the garage.

Children's bedrooms need to keep up with them. In a kids' closet, the hanging rods and shelves are adjustable, so the closet a six-year-old can reach on their own can be reset later for a teenager's longer clothes and sports gear. If the primary bedroom has a walk-in, walk-in closet systems add drawers, shoe shelves and double hanging.

Where a house has a garage, it tends to fill with bikes, sports equipment, pool supplies and holiday bins. A garage storage system gives each of them a place: wall-mounted cabinets, slatwall with hooks and baskets, overhead racks and a workbench, with Swisstrax floor tiles over the concrete if you want a new floor. Keep a cabinet free for hurricane-season supplies such as water, batteries and flashlights.

If your neighborhood has a gate or a homeowners association, give the gatehouse the designer's name before the consultation and check the association's rules on contractor work hours before installation day.

Royal Palm Beach homeowners share a design team with neighbors in Wellington and West Palm Beach. Start with a free in-home design consultation: measurements, a 3D layout you can adjust on the spot, and then a quote.