How We Organize Our Shoes
We all know someone who loves shoes and has closets full of them. Displayed on a shelf or scattered on the floor, shoes can become challenging to keep organized. It may be chaotic in large families trying to manage everyone’s shoes and get out the door to school or work on time. Do you arrange your shoes by style or color? Do you have different bins or storage systems to help you? Summer sandals, Winter boots, Sports cleats, or running shoes. So many kinds of shoes can easily overwhelm the best of us.
The Basic Organization team is here to help. We want to share how we organize our shoes and help you to live a more simplified life.
Janet- “The easiest way to keep your shoes (or anything else) organized is to have a small amount. The more you have, the more you have to manage and the more space you need. I have about 12 pairs of everyday shoes (walking shoes, work shoes, etc.), three pairs of dress shoes, and three pairs of boots.
I use a shoe rack
like this one for my everyday shoes. It sits on the floor of my closet, under some hanging clothes. My dress shoes are in
plastic shoe bins on the top shelf of my closet. Because I don’t use them often, they can be stored out of reach. My boots sit on the floor of my closet as well. I made a
video about ways to support boots so they stand up. I can store them all in my closet because I don’t have an extensive collection of shoes.”
Patti-“I organize my shoes by owning only a few pairs, which fit on a small closet shelf.”
“When organizing my shoes, I believe the key is not having too many!”
Lori-“I have a few different places for my shoes. I use the under-bed storage containers for my shoes. I store shoes per season, so in the summer, I put my sandals in a storage container by my front door and store my winter shoes under the bed. In the winter, I store my sandals under the bed and place my winter shoes in the storage container by my front door.
We don’t wear shoes in our house, so as a family, we also have a basket for everyone’s
shoes by the front door. They can quickly grab their boots as they head out the door or throw them in the basket as they come in.
Rouba-“When we had our closets done, I was lucky enough to have vertical shelves all the way up to the ceiling to store my shoes. I try to keep winter and summer together, and shoes always get cleaned up before they return to my closet. We also created a shoe shelf outside the garage as we don’t have a mudroom. This shelf mostly holds all outdoor and workout shoes. Our coat closet has a shoe rack that holds all our kids’ shoes. It really depends on how much space you have in your house or apartment to decide what storage solution would work for you. There are tons of options out there with different price ranges that should work for anyone. If you have shoes you haven’t worn in a long time, please remove them. And my best advice is, if you don’t have an occasion or a reason to buy a new shoe, don’t buy them.”
“My best advice is, if you don’t have an occasion or a reason to buy a new shoe, don’t buy them.”
Denene-” Each family member in our house has a dedicated shoe rack in the garage where we keep our everyday shoes. I keep my off-season shoes in a
hanging shoe organizer in my bedroom closet. Rotating my shoes seasonally between these two places allows me to review and declutter my shoes quickly.”
Michelle-“What seems to work in my house is having different zones for our shoes. The shoes we wear more frequently are stashed in baskets inside the front and garage doors. I store boots (snow and rain) in the coat closet. I also have simple
shoe racks in everyone’s closets for the shoes we wear occasionally, like dress shoes and off-season shoes. With five people in my family, keeping everyone’s shoes in one location would be overwhelming!”
Sue- “Organizing our shoes is fairly easy in my home. I have a
tiered shelf in my bedroom closet where I keep our dress shoes or those worn less often. Another tiered shelf is inside our garage door before entering the home. Running and walking shoes, as well as flip-flops, are kept here. Since I’m a Florida gal, I wear flip-flops a lot!”
“What seems to work in my house is having different zones for our shoes.”
Sandy- “When organizing my shoes, I believe the key is not having too many! I have a shoe shelf by the front door, where each household member is allowed four pairs. As the seasons change, I rotate shoes in and out of season—those no longer needed get moved back to the closet, and the season-appropriate ones come to the shelf. Special occasion shoes stay in the closet. In the closet, I use a rack built into the shelving system to store my shoes. I organize them by color, which helps me keep track of how many I have in each shade and allows me to downsize if any color starts to accumulate too much.”
Ann-“My family has a big shoe problem. Three out of the four of us love shoes way too much! We all store our shoes differently. I utilize the shelfs that come with my closet system and sort by type and color.
The shoes we use on a daily basis I have a big bin inside the front door. About once a month I make everyone take all their shoes out and put them away.”
Also, check out these clever solutions on
Pinterest.
The shoes we’re most likely to put on when running out are kept on a mat by the door. All others are kept on a shoe rack in our bedroom closet. This forces us to live by the “one in, one out” rule.
Good idea, using the rule. We used to keep shoe by the door, but it got too crowded when ‘people’ started always leaving all their shoes at the door.
We keep “daily/frequent” wear shoes in our mudroom under each cubby. The rest of my shoe are on shelves in my closet. I improved my storage by adding more shelves to my closet system. i have a lot of shoes because I wear an unusual size and have trouble finding them.
Oh! We’ve all seen closet shelves that are too far apart to make shoe storage efficient. Glad you found something to add more storage.
Great shoe options! Thanks for sharing. It’s nice to know that your POs practice what they preach. I have two sets of shoes, one for spring and summer and the other for fall and winter, with approximately 5-6 pairs each. I have one pair of heels in my closet because I rarely wear them. The rest are near the front door in a vertical shoe organizer. I have a tray at the front of this unit for everyone to take off their shoes upon entry.
Seems like shoe storage at the front door works for a lot fo people.
Shoes- different systems work for every different family and their space. I think the biggest thing is consistency. Following up with your family members to ensure they pick their shoes up and put them on the rack or in the container Every day! Great suggestions in this article!
I agree. I would add that when the family doesn’t follow the rules, don’t help them look for their shoes.
It’s so much fun reading how different people organize their shoes. Mostly, the variations seem to be based on quantity, available space, and access.
We keep our shoes in two areas – our closets (in shoe boxes and the floor) and in our entryway (in a shoe cabinet and shoe cubbies). The shoes we use most frequently (for that season) are most accessible. The shoes we use less frequently, are stored higher up.
You’re right that people do this differently. We don’t keep any shoes at the front door. Our entrance is too small.
I think that people vary their organization of shoes more than any other thing in their homes. Normally, we think of zones and would only have a “thing” in one place, but almost nobody seems to keep 100% of their shoes in one place. I grew up keeping all “good” shoes on the closet floor. Winter boots were kept on the bottom of the utility room-to-garage stairs to keep them dry (if not particularly warm) during the long Buffalo winters. And “running out” shoes (like sandals or sneakers to put on so you could run out to the driveway or next door to the neighbor) were kept in the “guest” closet (which I always called the coat closet, to my mother’s distaste) off of the foyer. Except for during formal parties/dinners, guests always removed their shoes and placed them on the edge of the foyer rug, by the heater, so they’d be warm in winter and they’d never track dirt or snow into the house.
We just never wore shoes in the house, and never kept our own shoes visible. I was an adult before I really noticed that people kept shoes anywhere but closet floors (except for boots, which everyone seemingly kept in the garage or utility/mud room during winter). It’s always been fascinating to me to see all the different kinds of racks, shelves, racks, and stackable boxes invented for shoe storage and organization, and I praise any solution that works for a household — except for mammoth messy piles inside the front door of someone’s house. If shoes present a fall risk, it’s a numbers problem, a storage problem, and a safety problem.
Personally, I’m not much of a fashionista. I’ve heard that the average American woman has 30 pair of shoes, and I’ve worked with clients that had as few as ten and as many has a few hundred. I have six or seven pair that I ever really wear, and maybe four more for dressy or working out that never get used anymore, but I hold out hope that I’ll eventually go somewhere dressy or actually work out…someday!
You are right about a pile of shoes being a safety problem. I’ve seen some alarming piles!
I have a few more pairs than you. One challenge I have is tennis shoes. I have a pair of good walking shoes, nice looking tennis shoes to be more fashionable when I’m out and one pair of pld walking shoes that I use around my house and yard.
We don’t wear shoes in our house so shoes tend to collect by the front door. Once a week, we put them away in our closets. We have large walk-in closets with shelves for shoe storage. The dressy shoes go in clear boxes and a re kept on the upper shelves. The everyday shoes are in easy to access lower shelves.
Good plan Diane.