The GS Hillside Estate Home Tour
Graceful Spaces hit the road for our first ever travel project! Four of our team members packed their bags (and the organizing toolkit!) and headed to Ohio to organize a beautiful 1920s French Country Estate. Complete with laundry shoots, elevators, and indoor fire hoses, the charm in this home cannot be matched!
The Kitchen
The owner’s goal for the kitchen is to highlight the charm and detail of the room while still maintaining functionality. For the counters, we choose to streamline the limited functional decor with a utensil holder, large canister & paper towel holder from the Crate & Barrel Farmhouse Collection.
See our complete list of kitchen supplies needed in every home here.
For this household, retirement means more time in the kitchen! Especially for baking. We chose a section of the kitchen that had the most open counter space to create the “baking zone”. Mixing bowls, hand mixer, measuring cups, and spatulas are grouped together to ensure baking projects are completed without having to move to various areas of the kitchen.
Throughout the kitchen we used bamboo drawer organizers in various sizes to create clear categorizes within the zones.
Kitchen Zones were strategically placed:
Tupperware/lunch prep - At the farthest end of the kitchen for a household that rarely packs a lunch .
Cooking - Spatulas, oven mitts, and pots and pans placed closest to the oven for easy access.
Daily Access - Glassware, plates, silverware… all closet to the frig and dishwasher.
Entertaining - Wine accessories, cheese knives, coasters, napkins, table cloths, and servingware are organized in the attached breakfast room. Away from every day but still in the kitchen and easily accessible when it’s time to entertain.
Holiday
This gorgeous estate boasts a large breakfast room including two walls of built-in cabinets. To make use of the additional space we decided to pull holiday entertaining out of storage boxes to be stored in the breakfast area of the kitchen year-round.
Holiday corks, napkins, china, platters …. all accessible. No bubble wrap needed!
Cabinet pan organizers were used to store platters vertically - making it easier to access and reducing the risk of special items being broken.
Oversized, bulky Christmas boxes are hard to store, an eyesore and frankly, they can be dangerous to carry up and down stairs. Our client had an amazing idea to store holiday in a basement room that was outfitted with adjustable shelving. To our delight, our favorite weathertight totes were a perfect fit for the space!
We micro-categorized all of the holiday which means holiday decorating can be done in one day… or put up a few bins at a time!
Pro tip: Label attic, garage, and bathroom storage in outdoor vinyl to ensure it stands up again the elements.
As a general rule, we like to keep categories of items together. In this case, we made an exception to make holiday decorating easy in a larger home. The bulk of the holiday is stored in the holiday basement room. Holiday entertaining is kept in the extra space in the kitchen and then 5 large boxes of oversized and fragile angels & nutcrackers are kept in a hall closet on the second floor. Because of an elevator (how fun!) near this closet, we knew this set up would be easier to transfer these bigger boxes from floor to floor rather than maneuvering up narrow basement steps.
The Pantry
Adjacent to the kitchen is a beautiful walk-in pantry. We took advantage of the size of this pantry and organized both food, as well as everyday entertaining items in the pantry.
Platters are stored vertically in Kitchen Cabinet Pan Organizers to maximize space, reduce the risk of damage, and to make it easy to see and grab what is needed.
Frequently used snacks are decanted and category baskets are created for general categories such as snacks and pasta. A baking basket is added to house all the items needed for baking - making it easy to grab and move to the kitchen when needed.
We believe every pan and serving tray should live a vertical life! Making options easy to grab and reducing the risk of breaks. Shop our favorite cabinet pan organizer from Target or see an adjustable option from Container Store.
The Laundry Room
This laundry room has found its purpose! A catch-all no longer! We’ve used multipurpose bins and Clear Plastic Stackable Storage Bins (a new favorite!). The counter is kept clear with the exception of soaps, pods and dryer sheet box.
The Handbag & Shoe Closet
Older homes don’t always boast the most storage space. Especially when it comes to closets! The solution, three different closets with three different purposes! Let’s start with the Handbag & Shoe Closet (our personal favorite!)
Investing in the right organization solutions not only highlights what you own but also maximizes the life of your investments.
To showcase and to protect this beautiful collection we added handbag shapers, boot shapers, shoulder covers & clutch organizers. Our favorite Pottery Barn Jewelry Organizer and expandable necklace tray keep jewelry accessible and easy to see.
The Master & Athleisure Closets
The next two closets are broken into athleisure (workout gear, tennis skirts and casual t-shirts & sweats) and workwear. Remember we said this house didn’t have great closets? An extra bedroom was transformed into a Master closet with three rows of storage plus plenty of drawer storage.
The Grounds
We wish we could describe the warmth and charm that flows through this home. It was unmatched! We can’t end this tour without sharing some of the gorgeous views we enjoyed on this project. Be sure to follow #theGSHillsideEstate for more pictures and updates from this prooject.
The Graceful Spaces team specializes in whole-home projects. We have found there are spaces in the home that work together to support sustainable organizing. When you think about organizing a space consider organizing the spaces that support. For example, a kitchen is impacted by the laundry room and the pantry. A Master Closet is often affected by the Master Bathroom. Our goal is to create systems that allow every room of the home to support the family and to flow together. Giving the gift of peace, time, and order.
Want to go deeper? Introducing, the Gracefully Organized Virtual Course. A digital, step-by-step course that shows you exactly how to organize the spaces in your home—for good! LEARN MORE HERE.
