Simple Shoe Storage On Adjustable Shelves
Are your shoes all over the floor of your closet? You know how chaotic that can get. It all starts with a few pairs of shoes kicked off your feet, and nudged under your hanging clothes.
Then you go away and turn off the lights, and they get busy. Pretty soon they have all reproduced. Suddenly dozens of shoes are piled up together under your hanging clothes, and you have to call in a search party to find the ones you want.
Everything Off The Floor
What this client wanted, most of all, was to get all of the shoes up off of the floor. I’m a big fan of getting everything up off the floor, too.
- It’s much easier to clean the floor
- You don’t have to stoop down or bend down to reach what you want
- You can put often-used items at eye level, so that (of course!) you can See What You Have!
Easily Accessed Shoes
Just like everyone has different taste in shoes, everyone has different preferences about how they want to store and access their shoes. There are lots of options for getting your shoes up off the floor, like over-the-door shoe racks, and Elfa pull-out racks, and fabric shoe bins that hang on closet rods. However, this solution was perfect for this particular client, because
- she wanted to keep it simple as possible
- she wanted to have all of their shoes visible and out in the open instead of tucked into compartments
- there was enough space on the back wall for packing in lots of adjustable elfa shelves to maximize the storage
This method of storing lots of frequently worn shoes is about as low-tech and non-fussy as you can get. No struggling with a wobbly shoe rack. No shoes falling through rails. No having to carefully place the shoes just so in bins or bags. Pull ‘em off the shelf, put ‘em back on. That’s my kind of ideal storage system, where you never have to think about it again and it serves you well, day in and day out.
Boring But Important Details for Storage Geeks Like Me
These shelves were installed close together, to pack as many shoes into the space as possible and use the vertical space most efficiently, and just far apart enough so that the shoes could be easily pulled out. See the notches along the vertical standard in this picture? The shelves have three full sets of notches between them, which translates to about 5 1/2 inches from one shelf to the other. This amount of space works just fine for most sandals, flats, and athletic shoes. If you are storing boots, of course, you would need to put the shelves farther apart.
Shoes Actually Get Put Back Where They Belong
The result? The happy closet owner can See What She (and He) Has! Their favorite shoes are at eye level, and it’s so easy to quickly tidy up and stick shoes back up on the shelves that – here’s the thing – it actually gets done.
How Much Is A Wall Of Elfa Like That?
Just to give you an idea of cost, I broke down the price of the five shelves on this wall, and the support structure for those shelves. (The hanging drawers below the shoe shelves cost extra.) So, for these five (5) 4’ long by 12” deep ventilated shelves, the fifteen (15) brackets for those shelves, the horizontal top track and the three (3) vertical standards, the full cost for those pieces would have been about $230, plus more for optional accessories like bracket covers and top track covers. Since the client bought the shelving during the 25% off Shelving Sale going on right now, she paid about $175.
(The Shelving Sale going on right now at the Container Store is ending next week on Sunday, October 16th. There will be another Elfa Sale in January.)
Considering:
- the ease of installation (these homeowners are handy with a power drill so they installed the Elfa system themselves)
- the flexibility of being able to easily add a shelf, remove a shelf, or adjust them in the future as their needs may change
It was truly a bargain, and Worth Every Penny for them.
This client likes her furniture eclectic, and her storage nice, simple and straightforward. She is madly in love with her new closet. In fact, she likes to sit in this chair at the end of the day and have a glass of wine, and just gaze fondly at her lovely closet. Isn’t that an incredible chair? I would sit in that chair and drink wine and gaze at the closet, too.
Can I help you visualize a new closet for yourself?
