Keeping shoes organized is tough enough with a big closet with plenty of floor space for them. It gets even worse when you have a non-walk-in closet with clothes hanging nearly down to the floor. You can’t just look in and see what you have to choose from when you’re getting dressed, so you end up piling them someplace more visible, which looks like crap. Or you end up just wearing one or two pairs all the time while the other gather dust.
Shoe organization solutions
I spent a lot of time looking at shoe racks. I love the over-the-door ones, but they won’t work on my doors. I like the idea of a shelf, but it would have to be out in the middle of the room looking tacky, and how do boots fit in a shelf if they’re not stiff enough to stand up? They don’t: they fall over.
The solution is some kind of under the bed box or plastic container (plastic slides well on my carpet, but you may want to test cardboard as well) that you can slide in and out of the closet easily. You can get these with a lid, too, so that shoes aren’t grabbing at clothes when you pull them out and dust isn’t collecting on the shoes you wear less often. I prefer one that doesn’t have compartments for the shoes so that my sandals take up very little room and my boots have room to lay on their sides.
Now instead of spending a minute hunting through my sad pile of shoes in front of the closet, I spend the same amount of time sliding a box out, grabbing a pair, and sliding it back in.
Storing shoes
As I’m sure you already know, you can also store shoes away in a box like this – under a bed or in a storage closet, or even up on a shelf in your closet. This can work well for saving space if you live in an area where there are months you’d never wear boots and other months you’d never wear sandals. But with rules about what shoes to wear when falling by the wayside over the years, this isn’t the case for many of us. You may wear boots with a skirt in the summer, or want sandals for those autumn and winter days that suddenly shoot up into the 80s if you live in the southern half of the US or a similar climate.
But if you want to put half your shoe collection away without forgetting what’s in it – or having to drag it out to see – there are a few very easy ways to do it:
- Photograph each pair of stored shoes and keep the photos in a collection on your phone, or print them out and put them somewhere in easy reach. This is also a great system if you store shoes in multiple locations around your home – you can label each photo with the location where the pair is stored.
- Write a description of each stored pair and turn it into an inventory list. Be sure to include details such as color, style and type as well as brand – just putting “Aerosole pumps” may seem fine for now, but what if you buy a few more “Aerosole pumps” this season? Knowing these pumps are also “red sandals” will help you determine whether or not you want to get this pair out, and that’s what you need to know.
