Shoe Storage

Shoes are something that caught us by surprise – we never expected them to be such a nuisance! We had patted ourselves on the back for whittling our shoe collection down to the essentials, but after getting rid of all excess shoes we still had a somewhat unmanageable pile – one pair each of sandals, bike shoes, hiking boots, casual shoes, water shoes, steel toed boots (for work) and dress shoes… just in case. In any given day we were rotating through two or three different pairs of shoes, depending on what we were up to that day and what the weather had in store.

A simple solution was to install hooks under the bed to corral everything. We hang shoes from tied laces to keep pairs together and the ones we use most often hang closest to the door. This changes with the seasons too, and we have rotated heavier shoes/boots toward the front and sandals to the back now that we are into colder weather.

Lessons Learned: For shoes, avoid the removable adhesive style 3M wall hooks – shoes are deceptively heavy (especially hiking boots) and our hooks quickly started to fall off the plywood after just a few days of use. For shoe hook attempt #2 we opted for the googly-eyed octopus style screw-in metal hooks and haven’t had any issues since!

Shoe storage solution attempt #1. The shoes were a little too close together to get in and out easily. Within days, these white 3M wall hooks started falling off the plywood.

Shoe storage solution attempt #2 is working out much better. We upgraded to the screw-in style metal hooks and spread them across the entire garage area for improved storage and accessibility. Boot dryers also help to eliminate any funky odors from forming in the garage.