What Do I Do with All the SHOES?????

We had 6 kids. What I did was put a box by the front door. When the shoes came off, the kids had to either put them in their room,or in the box. If they didn't do that then I took them. They had to then do a chore in order for then to get them back. If I had to pick up after them, then they had to help me.
It was tough going for the first week, but after that I did not have to kick shoes out of the way. It was amazing how quick they picked up their shoes.

1 mom found this helpful

i like a basket. i dont presently have a space for this, but a basket. or dividers, although shoe dividers have good intentions, but usually dont get used right? but if there was just a basket to throw them in...

i hope it helps!

We have a bench in our hallway w/ 2 small cabinets and two little shelves in between them. One cabinet contains regular shoes and the other contains sandals--that at least keeps them neater. The two shelves in the middle hold my two boys' shoes they wear the most (2 pairs each). In the summer we keep a shoe tray underneath to put the shoes on we wear coming in the house. In the winter we keep a tray on a mat by the door for wet snowy boots/shoes.

With as many feet as you have, you have to make everyone responsible for their own shoes. We had the rule (mostly for me :-) ) that we could have no more than 2 pairs on the tray at any given time. Usually at the end of the day I would bring my shoes back up to my bedroom closet. That way I only have to worry about one pair rather than five. I like the idea of the tiers for you since you have more shoes to deal with.

I feel your pain! I have 7 kids and my mom living with me. 10 of us, and noone has just 3 pairs since we live in Minnesota. We have no closet for them.
It stinks. We can never find a match.

Hi! I have a tiny house and there are five of us here too! I went to Target and bought the california closet system as we do not even have a hall closet! I bought four peices, one is a shoe cubby system that looks like a book shelf with dividers, on top of that I mounted a rack shelf for coats, to the side is a small drawer that holds all our mittens and hats, and above that is a closet with doors and shelves to through other stuff in and out of sight. I love it, but it still does not hold all of our shoes. I do, however, only keep two maybe three pairs of each of our shoes there, and then my dress shoes are kept up in my bedroom closet as I really only have four pairs at a time. My kids sandals or boots are stored in the laundry room when not in season. So really we just have our tennies, maybe a pair of sandals or boots, and possibly some quick slip on shoes for running outside quick by our entry. The california closets are beautiful too. I bought mine when they were on clearance at Target for 75% off! Watch for when they are moving out one style for the next as they are always changing and slashing prices. Organization is an unending job. especially with kids! Good luck!

A.,
Have you seen that show on TLC called "John and Kate plus 8"? I love it... they have 8 children. I just happened to see an episode recently where Kate had just solved that same problem. They bought one of those big wall organizers that is divided into cubes (open on the front) for their garage - just next to the door that they all come and go out of to the house. She put a big rug in front of it and a bench beside it to sit on. Everyone has their own cubby for shoes that is labeled. That way they can quickly grab what is theirs. If you had a big enough wall, everyone could have two cubes, with the second having a pull out cube/box for mittens and hats or whatever you grab on the way out the door.
God bless you! You must be a saint!

http://rakkudesigns.com/home.asp

The Ultimate Shoe storage!!!

hi A. about the shoes there are all types of shoes organizers on the market like one to hang over the door or a bookcase like shelf with slots for the shoes. you will have to find what fits in your home and would be more useful and practical for your family. and for the young ones my daughter has a mesh knit type of hanger with several different compartments in it that hangs from the ceiling and puts her shoes and socks in it in her room. plus if you have a back porch or front porch you can put a decorative chest out there for the shoes to be removed before coming into the house and put into them. this solves not only the shoe clutter but cuts down on the tracking in on the floor. I hope this helps or at least gives you some ideas that will help.

Shoe racks or over the door shoe organizers. You can get vertical shoe racks that take hardly any floor space.

Or get out 7 small totes or dishpans and label each with a family members name or picture.

Or hang a series of hooks, and the older kids can learn to hang them up over the hooks. i have seen this done by tying the shoelaces in a bow to make them hang like ice skates slung over your shoulder, and I have seen this done with wooden pegs, and you just place the shoe hanging on the peg by the heel.

Also, get rid of as many extra shoes as is feasible for your family. I own exactly ONE pair of shoes for myself. My husband has two. If you have dress shoes, those can be stored in the bedroom of the owner of the shoes, using racks or over the door organizers. There are also ones designed to hang from a closet rod.

Most are available at discount retailers, like Wal-mart, Target etc. No need to spend a lot of money on designer solutions.

Another idea: if you can find stacking bins that open in the front, you might be able to stack your shoes that way too.

This is what works for us. Off season shoes get packed away. Play shoes and boots are in the garage and never enter the house. We have a shoe organizer from Target in our laundry room which is by our garage door and our main entry. I think it has 25 slots, but for grown ups only one shoe fits in a slot unless its sandalls. We keep a couple shoes frequently worn organized in there and a rug for wet and dirty shoes to dry first if its winter. We keep other shoes like dress shoes, etc. either in the bedroom closet or on a bookshelf in the hall closet. I got it at a garage sale and it allows 3 rows of shoes to be stacked up and still fits neatly benaeath the hanging coats and their is still room for the vaccuum and broom along side it. I do not like clutter and this eliminates our shoe problem. I hope it helps you. :)

Go to Target and get cubbies. Put them in the entry or garage. Train kiddos to put their shoes in when they take them off.
Teacher Deb.

A.,
NO ONE enjoys tripping over shoes as they enter the house. Our home is small--the entry way is just 6 1/2 feet long. There are 5 of us--smallest feet are those of our 12 year old.

What works for us is lining the shoes up along the entry wall on the rug. Since they get put on and off frequently throughout days of nice weather, this keeps them handy and is a good compromise. Everyone gets one pair of shoes along the wall. The rest go in sport's bags or closets. Otherwise, I move the shoes to just outside the kids' bedroom doors. After a few times of tripping trying to get into their rooms, my children got the hint, and take care of their shoes themselves.

Try one of those organizers that hang over the door. Should be able to fit them all in there.

A friend went through the same thing you are going through right now. She has 4 kids, 15 y/o and a set of 10 y/o triplets.You would walk into her entryway and it would look like a shoe store exploded!! She picked up 4 diffrent colored bins and told the kids if your shoes do not make it in to this bin when they come off your feet you will not have to worry about finding them again. Needless to say it took a bit for them to start using them but when one of the kids had to wear a pair of bedroom slippers to school they started using the bins, LOL. She also hung up sturdy hooks above each bin, one for coats and snow pants and one for backpacks.

My daughter has a toybox with a lid that opens and closes by the front door. We use it to keep all her shoes in and a neat little bench to sit on and get shoes on. Works great

I put my shoes in a laundry basket to seperate them

You have alot more ppl in your family though. Maybe have everyone keep most of their shoes in their bedroom closet and just keep one pair by the door.

Maybe you could make or build or buy some cubbies for the garage or laundry room and give everyone in the family a cubbie or box to keep their shoes in.

A shoe rack, the kind you hand on the wall, behind the children's room door. This has been THE BEST solution! I love it! It really cuts down on the amount of shoes. We still end up with a shoe pile by the door, but at the end of the day, when you send them to bed, make them take their shoes with them and put them in their room in their shoe rack on the wall! It doesn't solve the whole problem, but it sure helped us out!

we have 6 pairs of feet right now- the seventh to show up in a few weeks, and because none of my kids know how to keep track of anything yet, we usually limit life to 1 working pair of shoes- even in Minnesota. In winter it is the boots, in summer sandles.

Everything else goes either in the coat closet of the shoe box in the entry. I know 1 working pair of shoes makes it so, they wear the same pair of tennis to nice occasions as they do to everyday... but it keeps me sane. If they loose their shoes or outgrow them we always check the shoebox for an alternative pair.. and if nothing there works then it is time to purchase again. ( can be very expensive to shod 4 kids)

I bought a wooden bench seat at Joann Fabrics and that's what we use. Their main pair is out and then rest are in there. I put tall, narrow storage buckets in there so one has dress shoes that need to stay nice and clean, another has flip flop types of shoes and the other is for mudd boots.
Works great so far. In the winter we use the buckets for dress shoes, hats, and mittens.
J.
Mom of 4, soon 5, and hopefully adopting many more.

Hm. Well, we don't have that many feet in this house, but have had similar problems in the past. First I got some cheap tiers from Target that are made to hold shoes and that fits in our hall closet. However, I wasn't happy with the fact that dirt/water would fall from the shoes and get other shoes/floor dirty. So I purchased a couple of cheap shoe trays that I placed in the hallway and in the closet in front of the shoe tier. That way dirty/wet shoes could land in the tray first, then be moved to the tier if not worn again or after they become dry.

I know a friend of mine with three kids just put a huge shoe tier system she got cheap from Walmart next to her front door. At least this kept the shoes neatly in rows so everyone could find things easily, even though it might not have looked the nicest (as it was not in a closet).

Hope you find something that works for you. Have you looked in the closet/storage system areas of the chain stores yet?

Good luck!

Get a couple of revolving shoe racks to sit either on your front porch if you have one, or just inside the front door and have everyone put their shoes on it when they take them off. You could also put one in each bedroom if you want to keep the shoes out of the living room. Of course the hard part is training everyone to do that. Its easier to kick them off and leave them, believe me I know. If you had one in each bedroom, and one at the front door, you could allow only one pair of shoes on the one by the front door, and all the other pairs would have to stay in the bedroom and they can exchange pairs as needed, keeping all but one pair in their bedrooms. A shoe bag mounted on the back of a bedroom door would work too.

Well, we don't have 7 pairs of feet at our house but I'm a shoe lover so I have shoe piles myself! First off, go through all the shoes and divide them into each persons own pile. A couple things you could do is there are shoe cubbies that fit on the back of doors which might work good in the kids rooms. Also placing a shoe rack in their bedroom closets where they'd be out of the way might help out too. I'm not sure how much space you have to work with but if floor space isn't an option maybe try building "shoe shelves" on the walls in their rooms where they can put their own shoes. My husband built me a massive shoe shelf in our bedroom to house my mountain of shoes, and if he can build one then I'm sure you could too! Our biggest rule at our house is keep your things in your own room; this also includes their shoes. Good luck!

I'm sure someone has told you this by now, but just in case, shoe organizers are wonderful to deal with these issues. They have all kinds. I have a huge over the door shoe organizer and a cardboard one in my closet. I keep a mat for the ones that need to dry out when I come in through the door and as my daughter gets older, she will have her own shoe organizer for the closet in her bedroom.

If I were in your situation, I would have some type of shoe organizer in each of the bedrooms and one for that front hall closet. You can even get labels so that everyone knows where their shoes belong in the front hall closet. Hope this helps!

iF YOU CAN GET A PLASTIC TOY BOX SAY AT A GARAGE SALE DO SO PLEASE.
gREAT ITEM TO HAVE HANDY BY THE DOOR FOR DRY- MUD OFF SHOES
AREA .
KIDS LOVE IT.
SILLY MOM WANTS ME TO PUT MY SHOES IN THAT- A TOY BOX-(WITH HOLES SMALL FOR MOISTER AND WETNESS CONTROL) SILLY MOM.
wORKS!!!
AND MOVE ABLE AND WASHABLE.

D.

everyone should put their shoes in their own rooms, to start with....and if there is a specific place to put them that would help...a shoe bag on the back of the door?...one of those wooden, divided shoe storage units like they sell in the closet sections of walmart or target?.... if the shoes have a specific place they belong and people are reminded regularly to put them away, after a while it will become a habit....

I allow my family to have one pair of shoes in a certain spot and the rest have to be in the closets of their own bedroom. This keeps me or anyone else from tripping over shoes and getting hurt.

A.,
I'm also a mother of 5. Sons! My rule was everyone had to put their own shoes, in their own closet - BOTH TOGETHER!! I can't tell you how many times I still had to hunt for shoes before we could leave the house. How many times I had to drive the boys to school when they missed the bus because they couldn't find their shoes!
When we finally moved into a home with a closet by the front door, the boys could keep one pair in that closet.
Sometimes I would have them tie the strings together when they took them off, especially when they were in the 4-8 age range.
I had to smile in spite of my self and my situation when I read your posting. I SO remember those days!!
Now 2 are in the USAF (one is married and hunting shoes for his little ones) 1 is in the US Army and pairing up little pink baby socks for my grand daughter. 2 still live with me, but they are teens now and are pretty good stuards of their shoes.
I will say - it does get better! I can remember those days well. You'll get through it.
H.

Here's our solution... We have a fair sized entry way (if you don't find a space near the entry, either around the corner, in an entry closet, etc...

We place a rug (about 2.5'x4') in the entry way. We are allowed to keep one pair of shoes on the entry rug (this works great for summer flip-flops and winter boots). When you come in you kick off (neatly) your shoes onto the rug. When you go out, simply slip them back on. If you wear a different pair of shoes out when you come back, take one of the pairs of shoes (either the ones on the rug, or the ones on your feet) back to your room - no exceptions! It really works well for us. The hard times are in the fall and spring when we often wear winter shoes one moment and summer shoes the next... but if you keep on top of it, it really works well. If you don't have room for a rug, build a shoe rack that goes up the wall (make sure drippy shoes can't get underlying shoes wet).

Dear A.,

We had that problem in our house with hats, mittens, scarves, etc. We ended up getting canvas boxes, the kind that have a space (pocket) where you can put a label - one box for each person. We put their names on their respective boxes. Then all their stuff goes in the box. So when looking for my son's hat, we simply can pull out his box and quickly find his hat. Your boxes may need to be slightly larger since you'll need to feet shoes vs. hats. We got our boxes at Walmart.

Hope this helps!

R.

I'm sorry, I can't give any advice on this one, except that I think it would make for a great children's story. You could write a book about it once you come up with a solution. You could even put each of your kids names in the book along with drawings of their own shoes. I'm sure there's some illustrator out there that could make a pretty funny picture of a mountain of shoes with mom's head peeking out. :) (I'm not sure why or how I got this crazy idea, but it sure would make a funny family story.)

We have the same problem at our house. Have you thought of using a cubbie hole for each person? Or limit each person to ONE pair of shoes in the front closet at a time? I find that both work for us. Good luck!!

Our family isn't allowed to enter the house with shoes on - As a result, we have an allocated shelf area just outside the door in our garage for them. We also have a lot of shoes - when you consider, for instance, the need for cleats, basketball shoes, outdoor sneakers, sandals, snowboots for each, water shoes, etc - so the pile could loom. We keep all seasonal shoes (in the off season) separated into a large covered tub - still in the garage - and those that are in season on those shelves. As for a pile - not a single one of us likes to seek out a pair, so it's become the three-year old's job thus far. My son had the job until this past fall, when my daughter took over at three. They sort the shoes weekly, or so - as we each manage to 'line up' our pairs as we remove them. Occ. they pile up, and then the shoe person takes over. - I'd seen a friend assign her children to shoe patrol, and thought no way - until the heap happened to us - and we became proactive right away. (Oh, and we have a sunroom at the rear of our home - and we are each allowed one pair of shoes/sandals back there.)

I'm new to this board and don't really know how to use it, or go back and read the responses you get but i'd love to know! We are a family of six and have the same problem!

If someone wants to help me out on how to navigate on this board email me at ____@____.com

Thanks!

Boy, can I relate to your situation! Last spring, I hired a home organizer to come to my house to help me set up workable systems to keep the clutter under control. One of the recommendations she made was for shoes. Now, all of the kids have individual bins labeled with the name for all shoes. This has worked wonderfully for our family. The bins are stored on some neat shelving that she recommended, so all shoes are accessible for the kids and it makes keeping things orderly a real breeze.

I SO get your life!(6 kids) I tried everything to deal with shoes, coats, papers, stuff...I never really did get a handle on it all but here are some things that I tried.

A collection of bins near the front door (or the door most often used)

Each child keeps his/her shoes/coats in their bedroom with their other stuff

Each child gets only one pair at a time (works better with boys)

I do not have a "no shoes in house rule" for this very reason. It worked better if they just took their shoes around with them.

Thank God for each child as you throw their shoes at the front door.

My final solution was to build a mudroom into our over-sized garage. I had hooks for coats and shelves for shoes. No coat or pair of shoes was ever actually placed there by my children, but it felt good to know that they could be.

Wait until they all start to leave for college, we have a lot less trouble finding places for stuff with the ones that are left. (In other words, this is a season and it will pass.)