The number of shoes in your house may be comical at this point—flip-flops, rain boots, sneakers, ballet shoes, soccer cleats, patent-leather Sunday-best Mary Janes. That's why having a place for everything is critical, because scattered shoes are the best way to turn an entryway into an obstacle course. Happily, you have storage options—from shoe racks in the front closet to shoe shelves under a bench. But before you make a pur-chase or search out a DIY project to solve your shoe situation, decide which shoes are going to live where.
Determine what can stay in the bedroom and what has to be easily accessible in the entry, then figure out storage to match your needs. I only store in the entryway shoes that we tend to grab on the way out the door. In the Oakland summer, it's flip-flops or sandals. They don't take up much space, so a small metal bin is all we need to hold them. For our Colorado winters, snow boots were lined up neatly on the floor, but Sunday shoes were kept in the bedroom closets.
Excerpted from Design Mom: How to Live with Kids: A Room-by-Room Guide by Gabrielle Stanley Blair (Artisan Books). Copyright © 2015. Photographs by Peggy Saas, Kristen Loken, Carpenter Photo – Stylist Sara Davis.
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