The start of a new year feels like a fresh, new beginning. Lots of people find themselves motivated to change things that didn’t work for them last year. Most look at their health or their jobs first. But have you looked around your home and considered the rooms where you spend the most time? A new year offers a new opportunity for kitchen transformation. If you spend a lot of time in your kitchen (and most people do) its mood will affect your mood. An old, tired, cluttered kitchen can make you feel old and tired with a brain just as cluttered as your surroundings.
Updating your cabinets is the best way to change the look of the room, because they take up so much space, and because new cabinets offer new ideas for organization that can allow you to find homes for some of the clutter. Starting this work in January or February gives you the jump on enjoying your revamped space for the rest of the year, and beyond.
Why Homeowners Feel Motivated to Redesign at the Start of the Year
There’s something special about the month of January, being a new beginning and all. But there’s also something weird about it. After holiday decorations go back in their boxes and guests go back home, the house can feel empty and hollow. Flaws that you hadn’t really been aware of can suddenly stand out. Lots of people are getting ready to live by new resolutions to improve their own habits, so improving your home at this time seems natural too.
The Fresh-Start Mindset
A new calendar makes us feel like it’s time to act, even on significant changes. You might feel a burst of energy to fix things you ignored for months. This energy is great for big projects like a kitchen cabinet revamp. When you feel motivated, it’s easier to make choices about colors and styles. You’re ready to build something that makes you happy every morning and evening for the entire upcoming year and onward. Why wait, when you have the spark right now?
Post-Holiday Realizations
Having to plan and cook a big holiday dinner is bound to expose any weakness to be found in your kitchen. Was it hard to find all the plates and serving dishes you wanted to use? Were they hidden all over the place? Did it take forever to dig out a big pot you use every year (but not often enough to justify keeping it somewhere easier to access)? Were the family and friends you were hosting able to find what they needed if they had to get something from the kitchen on their own? Which areas got too crowded and why? Did you realize you have a cabinet you don’t even use because it’s too hard to reach? Or the opposite — is there an empty space where you realized a cabinet would be a big help? Maybe there’s just a flimsy rack there instead? These problems are fresh in your mind as the new year begins. You know exactly what you need to change to make next year’s gathering better.
Beginning-of-Year Planning Energy
Lots of people feel motivated at the beginning of the year, but not just because of that feeling of a fresh start. The holidays are the biggest, busiest time of the year for many of us, and it can feel like you spend the whole later half of the year getting ready for them. Some families have a huge Christmas dinner and deck out their entire house with as many decorations as possible. But what comes right before this? Thanksgiving. The meal is the center of the holiday itself, and this is the most likely time for guests, even if they don’t come for Christmas. Thanksgiving decorations are getting more popular too, mostly thanks to retail stores pushing them. So it’s easy to feel like your kitchen and house as a whole are occupied for the entire month of December, with maybe half of November in there too, or more.
But what comes before that? Halloween. For some people, this is almost as big as Christmas (if not bigger) in the amount of decorating that goes on. Some go all-out in their yard mostly, but others do the entire inside of the house too to make it seem haunted. And then you have Halloween parties, cookies, candied apples, and other kitchen projects that many Halloween fans feel give more legitimacy to the holiday than just store-bought candy. Halloween preparations often begin at the very start of October.
Of course, not everyone pushes their decor to the limit for every holiday, but even a homeowner that just does “something” for every holiday will find an entire quarter of the year taken up by some sort of decorating. In January, after New Year’s Day, your house is finally normal again and it’ll be a few months before the next holiday where people traditionally decorate much. So you can finally put your energy behind more practical home improvement goals that you may have been wanting to set for a while, and for some people this can be extremely motivating!
Ideal Timing for Budgeting and Project Planning
The budget is the central part of any home project. At the start of the year, many people look at their bank accounts with fresh eyes. You might be planning how to spend your tax refund or a holiday bonus from work. Besides the possibility of these windfalls, this is the smartest time to decide how much you want to spend on your home. Planning early keeps you from running out of money later, and you can look at all your options without feeling rushed.
The new year aligns with financial resets, as January is when people set their budgets for the next twelve months. It’s a natural time to put aside money for new kitchen cabinets and plan out their installation schedule.
Cabinet Redesign Offers Flexible Investment Options
Kitchen cabinets are available in a range of price points to fit many different budgets. Of course, fully custom work would be a significant financial investment and take a long time to complete, but you don’t need to go to a professional cabinet maker if that doesn’t align with your plans. Mass-manufactured stock cabinets can be just as good in both quality and beauty as custom work. Of course, there are cheap ones out there that aren’t worth your time, but retailers like RTA Kitchen Cabinets Online sell only top-quality cabinets made from the same professional materials.
Many of these stock cabinets are also available in both pre-assembled and RTA (Ready to Assemble) format. RTA cabinets save tons of money on labor because you build them yourself at home, following provided instructions and using tools that are easy to acquire. They are made for pretty much anyone to be able to build and install without the need for a professional.
In between custom cabinets and stock cabinets are semi-custom cabinets, in which stock cabinets are altered to fit specific needs for a homeowner. This runs in the middle of both cost and lead time, as it takes the supplier some time and effort to alter the cabinets to your needs. These semi-custom cabinets are often available in both pre-assembled and RTA form.
Early Planning Prevents Mid-Year Cost Overruns
It’s impossible to predict everything that can happen during a year. Supply chain disruptions, material shortages, busy schedules, and even natural disasters can force any project into the background. Even something as simple as your desired cabinets being temporarily out of stock can be a disaster if you waited until the last minute.
Choose your materials, finishes, and layouts early to reduce later surprises. If the finish you like the most has issues with availability, you’ll know early on. If your desired layout upgrade brings new problems into your kitchen, you can address them before you fully commit. Early planning helps eliminate mistakes and also provides a buffer of time for those surprise random events.
Retailer Advantages: New Inventory, New Collections, and Better Deals
Retail stores like to start the new year by getting rid of last year’s Christmas and Black Friday inventory that didn’t sell out, and restocking everything that did. They also know that sometimes people are late buying gifts and that returns and replacements happen. While for them, the busiest shopping season is over, they want to keep up the momentum as much as possible. Some of them start as early as New Year’s Day to begin their next big sale, which is great news for anyone’s budget. Many retailers also bring in their newest styles during this time.
Early Year Remodels Fit Contractor Schedules Better
Most people wait until the weather gets warm to start building. This means contractors are very busy in the spring and summer. If you try to hire someone in May, you might have to wait months. But in January, many contractors are looking for work. They might be able to start your project next week instead of next season. You get more of their attention because they’re not juggling ten other jobs. They can take the time to make sure every detail is perfect. It’s much less stressful to work with a pro when they aren't in a hurry.
Redesigning Cabinets is High-Impact Without Requiring a Full Remodel
Your cabinets take up so much of your kitchen that they can be said to drive its whole aesthetic. This means that new cabinets can change its entire look — you won’t necessarily have to repaint the walls or replace much else. If you decide you don’t need to fully replace the cabinets, a fresh coat of paint and new hardware can make a huge difference.
Redesigning Helps Improve Organization and Decluttering Goals
One of the most common goals for the new year is to get organized. It can be harder to do this with older cabinets if they use simpler designs, because they might just have a couple of shelves and maybe a drawer. But today’s cabinets are available with special features like built-in Lazy Susans or drawers that can extend farther than the older style so nothing gets lost in the back. Updated accessories are also available like roll-out spice racks that can fit into a few inches of space, wine glass hangers that can attach to the bottom of wall cabinets, and much more. When everything has a home, everything from cooking to cleaning becomes easier.
Cabinet Redesign Works Seamlessly With Other New Year Projects
Maybe the changes you want to make to your home go beyond the kitchen cabinets. If you want to paint your walls and buy a new stove too, it’s a great time to take down your old cabinets entirely. You should also use this opportunity to coordinate the colors of everything in your kitchen. Cabinets, wall paint, flooring, and even appliances come in different colors and finishes that can look great together. Choosing the cabinet color first can be a smart idea since they dominate so much of the kitchen, and you can coordinate your wall paint and other colors around them.
Pairing Cabinets with Countertop Upgrades
Your kitchen countertop sits on top of your base cabinets, so the layout of your kitchen counter space is entirely dependent on those base cabinets. If you want to reconfigure your countertop to change your kitchen layout or add a kitchen island, you’ll need the right base cabinets to support this project. These two upgrades go perfectly together and will not only change the shape of your kitchen (if that’s what you want to do), but can redefine its look as well. You can coordinate the colors and materials used in your new countertops and cabinets, not just the shape and layout.
A Smart Move for Boosting Home Value in the Coming Year
A nice kitchen is the number one thing homebuyers look for. Unless they specifically want a fixer-upper or are intent on flipping the house, they don’t want to move in and immediately have to fix old cabinets. If your kitchen looks fresh and updated, and your cabinets use high-quality materials like solid wood and timeless design like Shaker style or its derivatives, you can raise your selling price. Even if you aren’t ready to sell and won’t be for years, high-quality cabinets build equity over time.
Tips to Make Your New Year Cabinet Redesign Smooth and Successful
Before you spend any money or even start with your planning phase, you have to evaluate your kitchen. Choosing the right type of redesign for your kitchen is the very first step. There are many ways to fix up your cabinets. Of course, you could replace them entirely. If your current cabinets are damaged or you need to redo your kitchen layout, this is the only option. However, you can also refresh them with new doors and hardware, or even just a new coat of paint.
Always bring paint samples and even cabinet door samples into your kitchen to see how they look in the lighting you’ll be seeing them under every day. Colors will look different on a screen and often in a store, too, if the lighting there is significantly different from that in your home.
If you are going to replace your cabinets, you need to measure your kitchen and measure it again. The tiniest mistake here can cause problems that can cost you hundreds or thousands of dollars to fix, so it’s best to do it right the first time rather than try to recover later. Use our free kitchen design help to learn how to measure your kitchen.
Choosing the Right Cabinet Supplier
One of the most important steps you can take is to find a cabinet supplier you can trust, who is able to help you out with personalized advice. At RTA Kitchen Cabinets Online, we’re happy to assist you every step of the way, so feel free to take advantage of the resources across our website and to contact us directly when you’re ready to learn more.
Final New Year Redesign Checklist
- Confirm final measurements.
- Approve cabinet door style.
- Select colors, finishes, and hardware.
- Decide on organizational features.
- Align installation with your schedule.
- Place orders early to avoid spring delays.
Start the Year With a Better Kitchen
Redesigning your kitchen at the start of the new year is a choice you’ll love. You’ll take advantage of a clear mind and a fresh budget. You’ll beat the crowds and get the best deals on the market. Most importantly, you’ll create a space that makes you feel good every single day. A kitchen you love is a place where you start your day with hope and end it with comfort. Don’t wait for a “better” time that might never come. Seize the new year and make your home the best it can be.
