Shoe dilemmas

Having just recently returned from the OC to Sydney for the final time, I have a few storage-related dilemmas on my hands.

To cut a long story short, I have too much junk, and not enough places to put it.

Now this has clearly been a long-standing issue for me, but what makes this higher priority than ever is that in a few short months, A and I will have to pack up not only all my crap, but all of both-of-ours crap and move it down to the gong.

Another confession: I am a complete sloth when it comes to unpacking. It's now been 3 days since I've returned to Sydney. The car got unpacked on day 2. Day 3 finds most of the bags that I lugged inside scattered over the lounge and bedroom floors.

But that's not what's really bugging me. Instead, I've suddenly developed an uncanny ability of being able to ignore the majority of the filth right under my nose. Instead I've focused on my shoe organisation, or lack thereof, as my main source of despair.

Case in point: the floors of my wardrobe, where I "store" my shoes.





Now before you say "that's not tooooooo bad" (whilst secretely thinking it is), I have a further confession to make. That tangle of shoes doesn't include the 15 or so pairs that I took with me to the OC. Yes, there are more shoes to add to this awful mess!

So before I go ahead and throw those shoes on top of this pile of ungainly debris, I'd really like to do something about it.

Over the past few months I've spent a few bit of time procrastinating scouring the internet for the ideal shoe storage solution. Unfortunately perfection is hard to find.

This is pretty much as close as I could get.

Mariah Carey's shoe closet, courtesy of http://www.instyle.com/instyle/package/falltrends/photos/0,,20053995_20045143_20066678,00.html

Unfortunately I don't have the luxury of owning my own wardrobe, let alone apartment; making this kind of customisation quite impractical.

I've been quite intrigued by all those clear plastic shoe boxes that seem to have sprung up everywhere. But how do you decide which ones to choose? Which are best? With handles? With a drawer? The cheapest? Clear or opaque plastic?


Image from http://www.imelda.com.au/well_shod_well_imformed/2008/02/shoebby-doo-whe.html

Given that I own a ridiculous number of shoes I can imagine forking out hundreds of dollars on flimsy plastic boxes only to get screwed. I'd either fill my wardrobe up completely with no room for clothes, or have them all break on me. Or not fit some of my shoes (I have big feet). Or I'd want more but suddenly the type I ended up choosing weren't being made anymore so I'd be stuck with unmatchy plastic boxes.

The possibilities for disaster are endless.

I like the look of racks like these Tjusig ones from ikea, but don't like the fact that they don't protect shoes from dust and don't really hold that many pairs. Yes you can stack two on top of each other, but can you store them two deep? Plus at $59 each, buying enough of these for all my shoes would be prohibitively expensive (for me anyway).


I'm hoping an in-person trip to ikea over the next few days will seal the deal for me. Man cannot wait endlessly for perfection, so I'm just going to settle for the best (and cheapest) I can get right now.

I'm thinking that for now, a compromise may be one of those Tjusig shoe racks, and a set of komplement shoe boxes.


They're cheap and come in a pack of 4. They'll protect shoes from dust, and you can still see what's inside.

The plan is that the shoes I wear most often will go on the rack, and everything else will fit semi-neatly into these boxes.

What do you think, is this a reasonable solution, or am I dreaming?