Need a way to organize shoes in my entryway

5 years ago

Hello!

I'm struggling with keeping my shoes contained in my small studio. All I'm using right now is a basket and it's not sustainable. Does anyone have ideas of a shoe organizer that would look good in my space? I need it to fit about 10 pairs of shoes. My entryway is narrow so something that is tall and narrow would be better than something short and wide. Thanks for your help!

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Bri Bosh

5 years ago

So much reinvention of the wheel happening here! Here’s our solution for our narrow entry. Hooks and racks from IKEA. We have them three racks high (holding 3 pairs each, so nine pairs total). Unfortunately it doesn’t work for boots. In small homes, we do need to get creative! We literally have nowhere, not even around the corner (that would be the kitchen) to serve as a shoe storage anywhere unless you go to the other end of the house; and with a busy husband and toddler it’s not likely that they carry their shoes there every time they come in, unfortunately!!

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Comments (14)

PRO
BeverlyFLADeziner
5 years ago
There are shoe cabinets that you could install but none of them would look attractive in such a small space. Take the shoes to your closet.
Amy Gonzalez
5 years ago
IKEA makes a shallow shoe rack.
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talley_sue_nyc
5 years ago
last modified: 5 years ago
What about a side-entry bookcase?
Put it flat against that wall, and stick the shoes in from the side.

Working on this principle:

or this:

Only, for your case, make it cubbies that are just deep enough for your shoes.

Like this:

Only in your case, I might want it even skinnier, the width of a single shoe, so I can set the side of it flat up against the wall. and the cubbies would face the front door, so they're not visible from the side.
talley_sue_nyc
5 years ago
last modified: 5 years ago

so, I measured the width of my sneakers, and I'd need a 4.75" wide cubby (interior measurement). Add .75" for the front and .75" for the back, and you're talking 6" for depth.
Make it 12" wide, to accommodate the length of a shoe.
Then install shelves that you access from the side, not the front. Space them to accommodate a single shoe, or maybe a pair of shoes (stacked, with one upside down) or a single boot.

You'd have to get someone to make it for you, probably, but it might be worth it. In NYC, I'd check w/ Gothic Cabinet Craft first, or Knossos (they had surprisingly good prices back when I had them make some stuff for me). I also got decent prices from Mike's on the Upper West Side.
I don't know where you live, but I bet you could find people who would make you something like that.

Here, I sketched one out!

This is to scale (1 sq. = 2"), but the diagonal/front-to-back is wonky, since I was doing it by hand. Basically, it's 6" deep and 12" wide (remember that the back side goes flat against the wall)

Note that I think you should go TALL (96" is 8 feet, which is the side of a piece of plywood). And for the part that's over your head, you could leave shelves out and put a pair of hooks inside, WAY up at the top, to hang boots using hooks clipped onto the boots (the boots will extend your reach). Just stagger the hooks so the foot of the lower boot is below the foot of top boot, because this is too narrow for soles to be side by side.
(you could use boot shapers, if they're not too thick)
talley_sue_nyc
5 years ago
last modified: 5 years ago
Another option to build up is to hang a set of shoe pockets on the wall (they're often not that tall, but you could sew two together, and you could cut them down to be skinnier).

Get the canvas kind, which are easy to cut apart and sew together. And then you could paint something on them, or hang a curtain in front of them, for pretty. You could make a curtain to go in front and hook it to the side for most days. But I don't know if you can hang anything on that brick wall, especially not something heavy.

(You could cut a tall piece of plywood to lean against the brick, and then keep it from falling over by getting a pair of tension curtain rods, or tension shower rods, and wedging them between the bathroom wall and the plywood leaning against the brick wall above the door. The you can hammer anything you want into the plywood to hold the shoe pockets, and maybe even a deep curtain rod for the curtain.)
talley_sue_nyc
5 years ago
You might also consider whether you truly need to keep all 10 pairs of shoes there all the time. That might lighten things up.
J J
5 years ago
Love the brick wall!
talley_sue_nyc
5 years ago
OK, so I confess--I'm captivated by this problem. I spent my evening commute thinking of you and your tiny entryway and your shoes.

The slimmest possible profile would be shoe pockets.

You could do the tension-rod thing up near the ceiling, and use a chain or cord to hang the pockets. Then anchor the thing at the bottom by staple-gunning it to the wooden baseboard (even if you rent--covering the hole in the baseboard will be easy to do when you move out).

What if you relied on shoe pockets, but cut them in half, to be two pockets wide?

Get a seamstress to sew the extra pockets on at the top or bottom, and remake the two bottom-most pockets to be taller for the boots to go in sideways (one boot per pocket)?

And dye the entire thing maroon or red-orange to blend in with the wall better. (Since I sew, if it were my problem, I'd make my own set of shoe pockets, and make the pockets taller so that they cover more of the shoe, and put elastic in the top hem of the pocket to pull the extra fabric back in so the shoe doesn't flop out into the space.)

And anchored the pockets to the baseboard at the bottom (you can fill in nail holes on woodwork pretty easily, so you could do this even if you're renting).

If you wanted a curtain, you could cut a piece of wood to attach a curtain rod to (they make curtain rods that stick out 3" or 4"; that's what I'd get, and then you couldn't have very many lumps affecting the curtain or getting in the way when you moved it), and then sandwich the wood between the tension rod and the brick wall (put something rubbery or sandpapery on the back of the wood so it resists slipping against the brick). This would mean your curtain would be really tall, up to the ceiling (or wherever you decided to put the tension rods--flush against the ceiling would be least obtrusive) but that would sort of look neat.

And you would need only a narrow curtain, so whatever you buy, you could cut in half vertically and sew end-to-end so you would probably have enough length

Using curtain rings that slide easily would mean it's easy to pull the curtain back out of the way.
PRO
Simplify Stuff
5 years ago
I'd suggest this Ikea Hemnes shoe cabinet which works well in narrow corridors and would fit that many pairs of shoes. I think it would look great with your colour scheme and could be a handy place to have a small bowl on top for keys or a letter rack. Hope that helps!
Kathy Yata
5 years ago
I'm with BeverlyFLADeziner on this one. The entry is too narrow for furniture such as the skinniest Ikea shoe cabinet - Stall at just under 7" deep and too attractive to put up shoe pockets. You are reducing the entry to under 30" wide, not pleasant. I'd regard your entry as simply luxurious space and leave it empty.

Carry shoes into the closet or perhaps you have room around the corner for something like a shoe cabinet.
talley_sue_nyc
5 years ago
last modified: 5 years ago
those pegs would be GREAT. I'd forgotten about those. Attaching them to the brick wall might be hard, especially if you're renting. But you could put them on the opposite wall (more in the way).

Or do something similar on a larger piece of wood and lean it against the wall (maybe poster putty or caulk would keep it from falling over, if you can't make holes in the brick?) If you can make holes, you could make a skinnier, taller unit on a single piece of wood (like a shelf or project panel?), and then you'd only have to make two holes in the wall instead of one for every strip.

EDITED TO ADD: remember that if you put the pegs on a backing board instead of the wall, you could probably attach that board to the BASEBOARD, which would be easy to camouflage later if you needed to (if you're renting, or if you decide to change your mind).
talley_sue_nyc
5 years ago
last modified: 5 years ago
I was at the Home Depot on 23rd St. in Manhattan this weekend and saw a wooden windowbox / planter that was skinny--what if you stood your shoes up on their toes in one of these?
(the one I saw was more rustic, but it was very long and skinny like this)

https://www.homedepot.com/p/Gronomics-4-in-x-4-in-x-16-in-Succulent-Planter-Wood-Rectangular-SP-REC/300684308
wednesday morning
5 years ago
You really need to get them off of the floor and into some narrow stacking fixture.