Shoe Storage
Most of us know what a "shoe farm" is. It is that are of your closet that has so many shoes thrown at random there that the entire area of that part of the closet looks like the shoes have minds or their own and have taken over that floor like those snakes from Raiders of the Lost Arc. If you ever needed to walk on the floor a closet where the shoes have staged that kind of takeover, the challenge of keeping your footing can be almost as frightening as those snakes.
Shoe farms are not always limited to the closet. Many of us build smaller shoe farms on the floor of the bedroom or even out in the house if we take off the shoes we use the most and just leave them in a common place. Before long, three or four of your favorite pairs of shoes may start to organize into a shoe farm in another room. It is clear that some form of organization is in order before the situation becomes even more out of hand than it is.
Many times the problem of getting your shoes organized is a symptom of a bigger problem that needs to be corrected when your whole closet could use a good reorganization plan. This is where closet organizers really do help. By stepping back and looking at what you have at your disposal in your closet to organize your clothes and the other miscellaneous items you keep in there, you can find an organizing system that can help get things in order.
A good closet organizer system will help you get your shirts, pants, dresses and even hats and ties organized in a way that you can get to the things you will use frequently while putting further back items that are not as commonly used but are still part of your wardrobe. This is a good first step of taking control over that closet.
When looking for a closet organization system, the need for good shoe storage is a must. The concept of just keeping shoe boxes you get when you buy shoes at the mall and using them for storage has shown that this is not a very good system. A good shoe storage system allows you to keep on display the shoes that you use most frequently. Then the shoes that are for occasional use can go into boxes and be stored elsewhere in the closet but not as prominently.
Shoe racks that allow you to stack shoes in vertical open shelving so you can put on display a half dozen pair of shoes are a great start. Then you can use more permanent clothing storage boxes to organize the other shoes you want to have available in your closet but not necessarily for daily use. When each pair of shoes has a place to be stored in this new system, the need to "store" shoes on the floor of the closet or out in the house goes away. And that is the way you go about getting rid of shoe farms once and for all.