Anna's Shoe Shelf

When I walked into Anna's house, I couldn't help noticing her new shoe shelf. When I complimented her, she said, "When we were moving furniture around, I realized that the bookshelf that was in my bedroom was actually the shoe shelf I had been wanting for years!" It's simply made, out of rough planks, but it does a great job organizing boots and shoes for two toddlers and two grownups (our family would need a longer, taller unit for all our footwear!) and I like that she has the basket of kid socks on top for those quick rushes out the door.

Right now our shoe bin is outside in the cold (I exiled it when I got frustrated with the piles of galoshes everywhere) and shoes are frozen so that they have to be thawed before they can be worn. But the garage addition with a mudroom is being built around the bin of frozen shoes, and hopefully I will someday soon have shelves for them all! In the meantime, I am admiring Anna's.

Comments

june cleaver said…
Wow, her shoe rack is really neat and tidy. Mine has been banished to the garage as well-but it is 7 feet tall and somehow the three-year-old's shoes end up on the top shelf, and everyone else's are just scattered around the shelf... never actually utilizing it to the fullest. Oh well...
12:30 PM
regina doman said…
I know what you mean. When we get our addition done, I plan to experiment with the shoe shelf concept and see if I can make it work for a large family.

The problem with shoe shelves is that they are most convenient in an entryway: however, if they are in an entryway, they must be kept neat or else the entryway always looks messy.

If we didn't live in the muddy country, I'd do what my parents did and have the kids keep shoes in their rooms, not in the entryway. Ah well!
8:06 PM
Beth said…
Hi Regina,
My mom just bought me your book, Angel in the Waters. I love it! I'm reading it to my unborn daughter tonight ;-)
5:33 PM
Margaret E. Perry said…
anna always does the cleverest simplest things. Why haven't we put a sock basket near our shoe bins for years? Brilliant!
1:58 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Clothing Organization part 3: Detachment and Appreciation

Image
The first part of organization is ineviably, paring down. And that brings with it the sometimes heartbreaking exercise of detaching yourself from things you once loved. (Yes, loved in the lower, materialistic sense, but nevertheless, loved.) So, in my effort to cut down my wardrobe, I gathered all my clothes from off-season storage and the cranies of the laundry basket and heaped them on the bed. I did the same with all my accessories: purses, scarves, shoes, and jewelry. Then the winnowing began: ruthlessly purging the unfit: clothing that was stained or getting straggly, clothes that really didn't fit me except in my fantasies, clothes that I never got around to wearing, and so on. Then I further winnowed out the remaining spring and summer clothes (farewell blue and green, till summer when we meet again!) as well any clothes that won't fit my third-trimester-pregnant figure. Also excised were maternity clothes from the last baby that were just too worn or out of style. I con
Read more

What I do with Old Scapulars

Image
A problem peculiar to serious Catholics ... what do you DO with old scapulars? When the strings tear apart and the images of our Lady start hanging -- you can't just throw them out, you have to burn them or bury them. I suspect most moms of large families have a little pile in the corner of their top bureau drawer of these little patches of cloth embroidered with Christ and Our Lady. Well, here's what I started doing with them: sewing them on the backs of my boys' overalls. This allows me to combine my hatred of name brand dressing ("What? You mean I pay you to advertise YOUR product?") with a desire for covert evangelism. See, the scapulars LOOK like those ubiquitous OshKosh tags at first glance -- but then you look again... Also, I don't mind having the Blessed Mother and our Lord watching my boys' backs in an extra special way. :) For non-Catholics: a scapular is two scraps of wool cloth with an image of the Blessed Mother on it worn front and back ove
Read more