The kids come home from school, eager to kick their shoes off and start the afternoon — and there it is, the inevitable living room shoe pile… or even worse, random shoes scattered all over the house! I'm having trouble coming up with a system that works for me and them, so I'm asking you — how do you control your little ones' kicks?
For awhile I made them take their shoes upstairs to their room when they took them off. While this solution definitely solved the shoe pile dilemma (and the where are my shoes?! dilemma), it created an altogether new problem — my kids are in and out of the yard all the time, and we probably have 4-5 shoes off/shoes on changes in an afternoon. I actually prefer it if their shoes are near the door, that way they can come and go with little hassle.
Right now I just have a big wooden crate near the door, and it's full of (can you guess?) shoes. I feel like I've partially won the battle just by having a place to corral the pile, but I just have this feeling that there's a better solution I haven't thought of yet. We don't have a foyer or mudroom; our front door opens directly into our living room. Do you have any tips or ideas? How do you control shoe clutter in your family?
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Our front door opens directly into our living room - no foyer space whatsoever. I keep a large wicker basket tucked under an end table to contain shoes. It's not ideal, no, but it keeps them together and not all over the house. My girls - 3 & 6 - know that when they take shoes off - they go in the basket.
Ikea makes an awesome slim profile cabinet that is a shoe storage system. It's just rather big and I don't have room for it in our living room.
We don't have any sort of entry, we come in the back door and are right in the middle of our kitchen, laundry "room", and falling into the family room. We use two of these shoe trees <http://www.containerstore.com/shop?productId=10024251&N=&Ns=p_sort_default%7C0&Ntt=shoe+tree> which keep our shoes off the floor and easy to find. They don't take up much floor space, which is good because we don't have any!
Do you have a coat closet nearby? The entire bottom half of our front hall closet is one giant shoe cubby organizer. That keeps the row by the front door down to about 1 pair of shoes per person
http://cleansmartsimple.blogspot.com/2011/10/another-shoe-story.html?m=1
We have a tiny closet and have two of these hanging shoe organizers http://www.containerstore.com/shop/closet/shoeStorage/hanging?productId=10012551&N=65218&Ns=p_sort_default%7C0. One on each side of the closet for each kids shoes and then another for hats and mittens in the middle. For coats we have 2 strips with hooks on the wall, one at kids height and another at our height. Then we have cubbies stacked in the laundry room which is just off the entry way for our shoes. The kids DO put their things away so it works for us, I just wish they would have made the entry way bigger! Trying to get 2 kids in snow pants, boots and backpacks while I just grab a hat and coat is very difficult, even worse if my husband has to go at the same time!
We just built 3 shelves for shoes inside our tiny front closet, along with cubby holes and in the actual hallway we have another shoe rack and wall mounted coat/bag rack AND a bench with bins in it for storage.
The best advice I can give is to keep the shoes at the ones that are worn the most in the front and store the others away and use only when needed. Especially come Winter.
I am in love with these shoe racks, but don't know how practical they are! http://www.mysweetmuffin.com/item.php?item_id=721
I'm another with a front door that opens directly into our living room. For now, we have a crock with the kids' shoes in it. My husband and I *try* to keep our shoes in our bedroom closet but there are usually a pair or two laying around the house. We do have a rear entry that is much more discreet and I could definitely figure out a more organized storage solution to go back there.. we just need to start using the back door!
Our garage door also enters into a tiny hallway with no place for any furniture or storage. So for the winter, we've repurposed one of the kids toy shelves (the Ikea Trofast shown here http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/20087525/) to sit just around the corner in the next room. The kids take off their stuff on the rug inside the door, then put mittens/hats in their bin and shoes/boots on the bottom shelf. We just switched to this a couple weeks ago, but so far my 2.5 and 4.5 year old boys LOVE it (seriously, what kid loves storage systems?) because it's like their cubbies at daycare.
We use the Ikea Trones: http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/30110832/ They're plastic but not shiny. We like the plastic because it's easy to clean. We stacked them vertically and they keep shoes out of sight but easy to find.
We don't have an entryway either, our door opens right into our dining room, but we have a church pew by the door with baskets underneath for shoes.
We use (for Toddler and Preschooler Shoes) the IKEA Benno DVD Tower. http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/07305310/#/87305207
Its so narrow, it fits beside a door and there is space for many pairs.
Our toddler daughter had a basket full of shoes by the front door and I could never find a mate to any shoe I pulled out. Upon visiting my friend, I noticed her brilliant use of an old milk/soda crate (turned on its side with a shoe placed in each hole) and said "Hey, I have one of these that I don't have a use for!". Voila. Brilliant storage for small shoes. My daughter and I can instantly see each pair of shoes and she loves that she can choose her own now.
We lack a mudroom or proper entryway as well, so we have a couple small wicker baskets filled with shoes on the floor right under our coat hooks (and one more for hats/mittens/scarves in this season). It does fine in the warm months, but gets a little jumbled there in the cold season because the space is too small to properly contain shoes, coats, backpacks, briefcases, and warm winter accessories for 4 people there, but it does the job reasonably well. Each person can only keep 2-3 pairs of most frequently worn shoes there, one hat/scarf/glove set, 1-2 coats, one bag, and the diaper bag. Everything else is stored elsewhere in the house.
I like the baskets because it keeps everything corralled, and it's easy to pick up the basket and clean under/behind them, and then put them back. When I tried to keep the shoes lined up in neat rows there, they took up more space, it took more effort to keep them looking neat, and it was a (slight but not insignificant) pain to sweep that area.
We lack a mudroom as well and our front door opens up directly into our living room. Our solution is a copper shoe tray from target...(http://www.target.com/p/smith-hawken-copper-shoe-tray/-/A-11331488?ref=tgt_adv_XSG10001&AFID=Google_PLA_df&LNM=|11331488&CPNG=Furniture&kpid=11331488&LID=PA&ci_src=17588969&ci_sku=11331488 ) The tray slides underneath our entryway console which looks something like this (http://www.potterybarn.com/products/shanti-carved-wood-rectangular-cabinet-console-table/?pkey=cstorage&cm_src=storage||NoFacet-_-NoFacet-_--_-) We slide out the tray place our shoes in it and slide it back under the console, out of sight. Then, the shoes end up in their regular closet space at the end of the day. Incidentally, the little doors of the console hide all of our hats and gloves too, out of sight!
We have the Ikea Trones as well. One bin for each family member. Even my 15-month-old knows to put her shoes in there (as well as an assortment of other random stuff). We have a small entryway, in a small NYC apartment, so we love that they're narrow and don't take much space. Easy to clean too.
I keep a wicker basket by the front door. I really love the Ikea Trone but truth be told I'm just not disciplined enough to put my own shoes in it (let alone getting my 3 year old to do it)!
We have a bench by the front door and keep the shoes lined up as neatly as we can under it. The daily shoes just live under the bench and the part-time shoes all go in the hall closet. We do have to do a shoe patrol occasionally if too many part-time shoes start accumulating under the bench.
We are shoe-free in the house so it's easier to keep all shoes as near to the door as possible. Fancy heels that I almost never wear stay in labeled boxes on a high shelf in the bedroom closet, of course.
We use the TJUSIG from Ikea .(http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/50152703/#/70152702)
It's only 13-inches deep, but holds plenty of little kid shoes. It's a bit tall for my kids to sit on, but a good bench for grown-ups. For out-of-season shoes, we tuck them towards the back with the toes pointed down, wedged between the metal rails (smaller toddler shoes will fall through, but as their shoes have gotten bigger, it's a good option). It keeps those shoes out of the way, and still gives plenty of space at the front of the shelf for currently-worn shoes.