The air is getting cooler, leaves are falling from trees, and with the holidays ahead, there's no better time to make your home a priority! If they haven't already, family and friends will start to pour through your doors to spend quality time inside. Here are some tricks to make your home cozier and more functional, so your family has more time to enjoy the season's treats:

Make your Family Foyer a Priority

With cooler temperatures, comes heavy outerwear and footwear. Make sure your family foyer or mudroom is ready to handle the additional gear by removing your summer items. Think of this area as a buffer between the outdoor elements and your cozy living space. A remodeling trick we use for our clients is designing storage spaces with cabinet doors, so you can easily hide the clutter when guests come. If you don't have a dedicated mudroom, create a specific space for all your cold-weather gear, like storage bins and clothes rack in your garage.

Create a Cozy Nook

Fall is the perfect time to cozy up with a great book and a warm treat. While a chair next to the fireplace may be calling your name, create a secret hideaway for your children to snuggle up with their favorite read. The unused space under your stairs isn't reserved for Harry Potter, it can make a cozy reading nook for any child. A recent client took the extra space over her daughter's closet to create a lofted fort. BOWA's carpenters built a custom ladder for her and now she has her own retreat within her room. Rethink the dead space around your home and make it usable and cozy for the colder months.

Custom Cabinetry Organization

What's another fall tradition? Treats! Make cooking and baking in your kitchen enjoyable with organized cabinets and drawers. You can simply clean out the old to make a more organized space, buy additional cabinet and drawer organizers from your local home store, or for larger projects reimagine your whole kitchen!

Our remodeling clients have incorporated custom cabinetry organization to make sure they're spending time in the kitchen with family and not battling an unorganized mess.

If you want to learn more tricks for making your home work better for you and your family, let me know. BOWA has more than 30 years of experience helping clients to improve their lives at home.