DIY Shoe Shelf – Shoe Storage Solutions!

I have tried several different kinds of the shoe shelves you can find for sale in stores over the years with my four little boys. However, none of them really worked great for us. There are the cubby shoe shelves that work find for me and my husband but the kids never put their shoes away and always “couldn’t find” them. I’ve tried the over the door kind of shoe holders. We have added places in their rooms for their shoes. But nothing worked until this really simple solution, our DIY Shoe Shelf!

DIY Shoe Shelf

We had an older bookshelf that we weren’t really using for anything and thought we would give it a try for our shoes for a while. With how little our kids shoes are, though, and with how many different pairs they each have placing the shoes directly on the shelf just wasn’t working for us. So, then I grabbed a couple of totes and tossed in their shoes and now the shoes looked tidy and our shelf could hold a ton but there was still one small problem. The shoes were nearly always mixed up and jumbled about as my boys didn’t know which one to put them in. I grabbed a couple of loose shoelaces I had around the house and laced them right through the basket weave design in the baskets and made initials for each of the boys baskets. The last basket is for us adults, so we left it without an initial.

The shoe shelf makes our entry way look tidy even if the shoes are wildly tossed in there (which they always are!). The great thing is, the boys can just pull out their tote to look closer to find a certain pair of shoes and the totes slide really nicely on the shelf. They don’t need to be pulled out to put the shoes away or to find them, but you can if you want to. When we rush into the door after being out and about, the kids know right where to put their shoes and also where to find them again when it’s time to leave the house.

The top of our shoe shelf also makes the perfect landing spot for our mail as it comes in the door. I toss the sale flyers right away and take any magazines to our magazine rack but the letters I need to sort through or send out can land in a nice basket until I have a minute to go through them. I use a cool souvenir I got while I was in China for a semester abroad to store some pens easy to access as I always seem to need a pen by the door.

Another part our entry decor is our Family Home Evening sign. We try to dedicate one night of the week, Monday night, to spend together as a family. Often, we spend most of the other nights together, too, but we make it a special time to laugh, play, and enjoy each other. We give everyone a “job” for the evening and our fun sign here helps us rotate and pick out the jobs for the week.

Disclosure: No compensation was received for this post. Topic: DIY shoe shelf, shoe storage solutions