Organizational Projects- Part 2 Shoe storage

Oh yes, we are busy! And when we are not busy, we're reading about being busy! Actually this is one of Lydia's favorite books. She asks me to read it to her almost every day at nap time. I love how huge it is compared to her. Look at those little toes peeking out... adorable.

Anyway, back to being busy. One of my very loyal readers (my sister) asked me to post more about organizational projects we've been working on. So, today I thought I'd share a garage project that worked for us.

I don't know about you, but our family has a lot of shoes. We've got chore boots, “land” shoes (really dirty shoes that are ok to play in), town shoes and church shoes. That's a lot of shoes when your talking about storing shoes for 6 people!

I found myself wading in shoes just to get to the washing machine in the laundry room. The solution?
Build a simple “mud room” system in the garage.

We purchased some open bins from Lowes (I was afraid if they had lids we might never use them) and Tom built a bench around them using some left over lumber. While we were at it, we installed some hooks above that because we have chore coats, rain coats, town coats... you get the idea. The girls painted the bench white~ and I think we will paint the shelf white too, but for now it's working and that is the important thing.





I already had the above shelf cubbies from Costco, but since closet space is at a premium inside we moved them out here also. We use them for our church shoes, gloves and hats etc.

Tom and I were cracking up after I took this picture- apparently the shelf is also where we keep our mini cooler and our gun. Don't worry, it's just a BB gun, but looks rather country of us, don't you think?