Robert Hayes
Since it’s likely your shoe, boots, high-heels and sneaker collections are growing (whether your spouse realizes it or not), there are 2 key questions you need to ask yourself: Question 2 – How can you develop a system(s) to find the pair you need so they aren’t buried in the nether-nether lands of your closet? I’m going to dish out 13 wild, wacky and workable solutions to help you create shoe storage solutions to keep up with what you’re buying – even if own a 1900’s home with closets designed around a farmer who owned 2 pairs of shoes and 3 sets of clothes. At the end of the article let me know which of these ideas were useful and questions you have to solve your specific shoe storage problems.
The most important thing you can do for your shoes is get them off the floor of your closet where they’re buried underneath hanging clothes. It’s a system of thin (yet sturdy) aluminum shelves which allow you to get more pairs inside a smaller space.
What’s nice about this ‘shrine’ is you can adjust these shelves to fit boots, flats or mid-height shoes – and they work in small spaces like reach in closets. I don’t know about you, but some of the DIY shoe organization ideas on Pinterest look downright ugly to me.
Repurposed pallets and PVC pipes wouldn’t cut it for me (and my wife would throw out these ugly approaches in a “New York Minute.”)
However, with that being said I thought this ‘shoe ladder’ pic I saw on a Pinterest closet board was an ingenious idea. Even if your closet is too small you can put this decorative ladder in the bedroom, in a wide hallway, in an entryway – you name it. OK – this is a bad play on words – but it’s always a good idea to figure out what to do with the ‘dead corners’ (whether they are in your kitchen, pantry or walk-in closet) and a Lazy Susan type of system can be a savior.
Even though I can’t to this day figure out who the heck this “Lazy Susan” woman is (and why no one has motivated her to get off her butt by now, but I digress). Using the concept of the revolving tray for shoes in the corner of a walk-in closet is an idea which is long overdue. I loved this idea of buying low-cost closet tension rods and installing them between wall niches for shoe storage.
This trick costs you ZERO dollars – yet you’ll get more of your pairs in the same square footage (get it – ‘foot-age’ – now that’s a bad pun! They are not only a fun way to use unused space, but since the stairs are close to the door, it’s a logical place to put shoes as well. The ‘entryway’ (if you can call it that) or ‘glorified hallway’ in my home is a grand total of 39” wide.
Years ago, we installed this 7 ½” deep x 65” high shoe gem which holds 15 pairs. Given height constraints I loved this ‘fill up the box’ approach one of our customers used for a multipurpose entryway/hallway storage and kitchen area off their back door entrance. Here’s one fun idea we could have taken advantage of with his graveyard of unused boards (except stuff them in the garage). Now only if you can get your kids to put their shoes on the shelf (Note – the goal of this article is to be informative, but I make no promises to be able to perform miracles! Their height also changes (you can see this with the lack of space for your boots today) Since most shoe shelves are as fixed as your Dad back in the day when you asked him to give you a longer curfew as a 16-year-old starting to date, this lack of flexibility is not a good thing. With laminate closet systems you can use the ‘increment’ holes on side support panels to change your shelf heights as needed.
If we’re going to get ‘real dog’ (as Randy Jackson might say if he was still doing American Idol) and we look into our closets we all have dusty pairs of shoes. You’ll gain shoe storage space (or find more places to hide new pairs you don’t want your spouse knowing about– just kidding about that). Now that we’ve gone through the 13 wild, wacky and workable shoe storage ideas which one(s) do you need to get motivated to do TODAY? If you’d like help planning your shoe storage (or closet, or entryway or pantry shelving) in your home in the Columbus or Cleveland Ohio areas, we’d love to assist. For more information on organization products or remodeling (with a bit of wacky humor thrown in) follow me on Twitter @Mike_Foti or our companies’ @InnovateBuild and @InnovateHomeOrg.
