Renovation and Closet Consulting in Maryland
Organizing expertise for Maryland families planning a renovation or new build. We work alongside your architect, interior designer, and builder to make sure every closet, cabinet, and drawer is designed for how your family actually lives.
The Closet That Looked Great on the Plans
Most renovations and new builds get the big stuff right. The kitchen layout. The flow between rooms. The light. What they tend to get wrong, or just not think about deeply enough, is the storage and functionality of the home.
The pantry that turns out to be six inches shy of holding a cereal box upright. The mudroom bench with no place for actual backpacks. The primary closet that fits the clothes but has no spot for shoes or handbags or long hanging dresses. By the time you notice, the drywall is up, the cabinets are installed, and changing anything costs real money.
We have seen this play out hundreds of times. Interior designers and builders are excellent at what they do, but they are not Professional Organizers, and the fine-grain details of how stuff actually gets stored often fall through the cracks during planning. That is where we come in.
What Renovation Consulting Includes
We work with families at different points in the renovation timeline, depending on where you are when you find us. Here is what each piece of the engagement can look like.
Pre-Renovation Planning
This is when we add the most value. We sit down with you, your interior designer, and sometimes your builder during the planning phase to review blueprints and talk through every storage space in the project. Pantries, closets, mudrooms, garages, laundry rooms, kitchens, and bathrooms. We bring an inventory-level understanding of what you actually own and how you actually use it, then translate that into specific recommendations for closet designs, shelving depths, drawer counts, door swings, outlet placement, and the small details that make storage actually work.
Pantry and Closet Design Collaboration
If you are working with a closet designer or cabinet maker, we collaborate directly with them. We have worked alongside many Maryland-area design firms and have a good sense of where their plans tend to need adjustment for how families actually use their closets. Most designers and builders welcome the input, especially when it makes the final result better. If you do not have a closet designer yet, we can sketch plans and connect you with our trusted closet partners.
Storage Selection
We collaborate on the functionality of the furniture and products your home needs. The storage cubbies for your playroom. The bins for the new pantry. The hangers for the new closet. The bench cushions, drawer organizers, lazy Susans, and product layer that turns a finished space into a functional one. This often gets overlooked until move-in week, which is exactly the wrong time to start sourcing.
During-Renovation Support
Renovations always take longer than the original timeline. We have never seen one that didn’t. While construction is happening, your family still needs to live somewhere, and that somewhere is often a chaotic version of part of your home. We help you pack away non-essentials before demo starts, set up temporary functional systems for whatever rooms are still in use, and keep your household running while everything else is upside down.
Move-Out and Move-In Coordination
Some renovations require moving out entirely. Others mean shuffling everything to one side of the house while contractors work on the other. We coordinate the logistics of both scenarios, often pairing with our Organized Moves service for major projects.
Post-Renovation Setup
Once the dust settles, we come back and bring the new space to life. We unpack what was stored during the renovation, build out the systems we planned together months earlier, source the products, label everything, and hand you a finished home that is organized from Day 1. This is the moment most families realize the upfront planning paid off.
How Renovation Consulting Works
The shape of the engagement depends entirely on where you are in the project. Here is the rough timeline for a full pre-to-post engagement.
Initial Consultation
We meet at your current home, the new house under construction, or both. You walk us through the project, share the plans, and tell us what is working in your current home and what isn’t. We take notes, ask a lot of questions about your household’s habits, and identify the storage areas in the new design that need a closer look.
Review Plans
We sit down with the architectural drawings, designer renderings, and any cabinet or closet plans. We mark them up with recommendations: this shelf should be adjustable instead of fixed, this pantry needs an outlet for the coffee station, this drawer should be deeper, this closet needs a second hanging rod. Sometimes we sit in on design meetings directly.
Inventory Audit
Before the renovation starts, we walk through your current home and audit what you actually own. This is critical because the storage in the new space needs to match the volume and category of belongings coming with you. Most families dramatically overestimate or underestimate certain categories.
During-Construction Support
We help you pack down the affected spaces, set up temporary functional systems for the rooms still in use, and handle any organizing logistics that come up while construction is underway.
Post-Construction Setup
Once the renovation is done, we come back to unpack, organize, source products, label, and stage everything. This is typically the biggest and most rewarding phase of the project.
Maintenance and Adjustment
A few weeks after move-in, we check in to see what is working and what isn’t. Some systems need small adjustments once you have lived with them. We tweak as needed and make sure the spaces are truly functional for the long term. Our membership program is a natural fit at this stage.
Why Maryland Designers, Builders, and Homeowners Work With Us
We Speak the Language
We have collaborated with enough designers, architects, builders, and cabinet makers in the Maryland area that we know how to plug into a project without slowing it down. We respect the design vision, we know how to give feedback constructively, and we understand the construction timelines that govern everything.
We Think About Storage at a Level Most Plans Don’t
Designers think in terms of space and aesthetics. Builders think in terms of materials and timelines. We think in terms of where the gift wrap supplies will go and whether the drawer is deep enough for the cookie sheets. That level of detail is what separates a beautiful space from one that actually functions.
We Save You From Expensive Regret
The fixes you make on paper cost essentially nothing. The fixes you make after the cabinets are installed cost thousands. We catch the issues during planning when they are cheap to solve, which is usually the entire ROI of having us involved. We will also tell you which custom inserts are worth the money and which to skip.
We Help You Live Through It
The during-construction phase is the part most families do not plan for and then suffer through. We have helped many Maryland families manage the disruption: temporary kitchens in basements, kids’ rooms doubling as offices, and holiday seasons spent with half a house under tarps. We know how to make it livable.
Susie’s Background Shows Up Here Too
Susie was a military spouse for two decades and a former event planner, which means she understands what it is like to live through prolonged disruption and to coordinate multiple moving pieces under pressure. The renovation process needs both of those skill sets.
Local Maryland Knowledge
We know the older Annapolis homes with awkward closet depths. We know the newer Howard County builds where everything looks great until you try to fit a vacuum in the utility closet. We have seen the patterns, and that experience translates into faster, smarter recommendations.
When to Call Us
The earlier in the project, the better. Ideally, we get involved before plans are finalized, which is usually four to six months before construction starts. That said, we have come in at every stage, including the day after a contractor handed over the keys to a finished home that wasn’t quite working.
If you are in the very early phases, thinking about a renovation, interviewing designers, or sketching ideas, call us. A single consultation can shape decisions you will live with for the next twenty years.
If you are already mid-construction, call us. We can still help with the during-construction logistics and the post-construction setup, even if the design phase is behind us.
If your renovation is finished but the spaces are not working the way you hoped, call us. We can often fix a lot of it with smart organizing and the right products, no demo required.
About Susie and the Team
In 2014, Susie Salinas started Systems by Susie with one mission: lightening the loads of busy people so they could have more time to focus on what they love. Today, she leads a team of fifteen incredible organizers across six Maryland counties.
Susie was a military spouse for two decades and a former event planner before this. The event planning background turns out to be especially useful for renovation work, where every project involves multiple vendors, shifting timelines, and constant problem-solving. She and the team have collaborated with designers, builders, cabinet makers, and closet companies all over the Maryland area, and we know how to plug into your project team in a way that adds value without adding chaos.
Every member of our team is fully insured, background-checked, and trained in the Systems by Susie process. We treat every home we walk into the way we would treat our own.
Investment
Renovation consulting is usually billed at an hourly rate because the scope varies wildly from project to project. Here is roughly what to expect.
Consulting Rate
$100/hour
Includes plans review, design meetings, inventory audits, and recommendations.
Pre-Renovation Engagement
5 to 15 Hours
Depending on the scope of the build and how many storage spaces need detailed attention.
During and Post-Renovation
$100/Organizer Hour
Billed at our standard organizing rates and paired with packing, unpacking, and organizing services as needed.
Full Pre-to-Post Engagement
Custom Proposal
Based on the project scope. Most families find the upfront consulting easily pays for itself in avoided design mistakes.
Frequently Asked Questions
Planning a Renovation or New Build?
Contact us to bring organizing expertise into your project before the cabinets go in, so every closet, pantry, and drawer is built for how your family actually lives.