Decorated Chaos: Shoe Organization

Many of you may think this is funny, but we keep our shoes in the garage.

Yes, the garage....as in next to the lawn mower, trash can, and dog food. We do not have a large enough foyer or mudroom for proper storage of shoes, backpacks, dog leashes, etc. so it all goes in the garage.

We are a shoe-free home meaning we do not wear shoes in the house or keep them in our closets, so we created a little "mudroom" of our own with a shoe shelf.

This is great but our mornings consist of getting ready IN the house THEN on our way out to the car we slip on our shoes IN the cold garage.

And lets face it folks, some days are better than others and we take the time to nicely put on our shoes in an organized fashion, slowly, as to not knock things over, while ~~other~~ most days are hectic and we're lucky to chaotically grab two matching shoes that we hope coordinate with our outfit for the day! LOL

Which brings me to exhibit A:

The shelf of shoes.

Lets take a closer look at the bottom shelf.

This is what the other shelves look like.....a disarray of shoes piled two or three deep, and who knows if you can find the match!

So enough was enough.

In an attempt to organize my shoe collection, I took full advantage of the "Back to School" shoe sales at my local thrift stores. Isn't that nice of me?

......to buy MORE shoes when I have an unorganized pile of them already?

Well, what can I say? I don't like to let opportunity pass me by so I went for it!!! :)

And for the record, shopping for thrift store shoes takes some skill and you have to know how to look for the signs of wear and tear.

Well, I put my skills to the test and found ~~some~~ LOTS of practically new, and some BRAND NEW, shoes that I wanted to somehow fit on the shelf above in Exhibit A!

And here they are:

Let me quickly show you some of my favorites:

This pair has a sequin-y like texture and sparkle that is perfect to wear with my jeans this fall.

Then there are these flats in animal print.

I'm a sucker for animal prints!!!

And then there were these babies!

Oh I love these shoes. They zip up the back, they are gray, and they were brand new with the $50 price tag on the bottom!

Of course I only paid $5 bucks for these so no sweat off my back!

And who can resist a NEW pair of Mootsies Tootsies?

As you can see they are clean and were never worn.
Not bad for a couple bucks, and the little satiny like twist on the front makes them oh so perfect.

And last but not least these brown shoes from

Coldwater Creek.

Their shoes normally run around $50 bucks or more so when I found these almost new pair, with their brown beaded rosette on the front I had to have them.

They look great with white capris :)

Ok so those were my favorites of my new shoes, all of which were less than $5 bucks each.

Score!

Now......my motto is if I bring shoes into the house I have to take shoes out of the house.

So after clearing the shelf above in exhibit A and going thru the shoes pair by pair I decided to donate this pile of shoes.

Now, I have a delima.

I needed to find a way to better organize these shoes so that they don't flop around and slip thru the cracks in the shelf.

So I came up with a simple solution.

CONTACT PAPER!

I remembered I had this cute black and white toile print contact paper that would give the shelf a little style AND cover the holes so that the shoes stay put and don't fall over all the time.

And here is the shelf cleared off with the contact paper down.

Pretty nice if you ask me. Much prettier than before!

Now, I have to start adding back the shoes pair by pair........

and Voila!

Look at that organized shelf....um, I mean Exhibit A:

Since I bought several pair of shoes I pretty much replaced all the shoes I threw out with new ones, so I didn't really GAIN any space, but that's ok.

The trick here was to take what I had and organize them in a way where they will stay put on the shelf and not fall over and lead to a pile of mis-matched shoes.

I only added the shelf paper to the top shef with the heels and work shoes since the boots are thick enough to not fall thru the holes in the shelf.

I simply straightened up those shelves, and added a cardboard box to keep my cheap flip flops in.

So now our new shoes are cleaned and organized, and mornings are a tad bit easier to endure now that I can see all of my shoes and quickly grab a pair that goes with my outfit for the day!

There is nothing worse than grabbing one navy blue one brown shoe only to notice it at luch time! LOL :)