Remember to check out Rocks In My Dryer for more Works For Me Wednesday tips.
Here’s mine:
Chrissy asked for some organizational tips, specifically on keeping track of children’s shoes. Even though I sometimes feel like I live in a shoe, I have to admit I don’t have it all together in the shoe department. However, here’s what works for us – when we practice what we preach:
- Pare down the shoe population. This is the biggie – it’s scary, but it really does work. When your children have 9 backup pairs of shoes, no one is very motivated to keep close track of any of them. We try to keep just one pair of everyday shoes and one pair of church shoes for each child. That way they can’t be very lost. You know they just had them yesterday!
- Keep the house/bedroom/closet clean. Maybe this seems obvious, but the better we do at keeping things picked up and uncluttered, the fewer places there are for shoes to hide.
- Have a place for shoes. Of course, right? Just make sure it’s easy, so it will be used consistently. We toss them in the bedroom closet. They don’t have to be neatly lined up – our closets are small and we don’t have many shoes. They just have to be in there.
Does anybody have anything to add? How do you manage shoes in your household?
Related posts:
I have a “boot tray” under a bench in my entryway. A lot of shoes wind up there. Except for mine. My shoes stay on my feet!
I like your closet idea.
We use the shoe bar right inside our patio door. For the most part the kids shoes end up there..but there are mornings we are searching for the one shoe that “ran away”. We too have limited shoes…they each have a pair of tennis shoes for play and a pair for “nicer occasions”. During the winter they have a pair of boots and the summer some sandals…it helps when they dont have 15 million pairs of shoes
A friend of mine uses the over the door shoe pouch for her kids shoes..they each put their shoes in the pouch therefore they should be there when needed.
Christy
We limit shoes, too. Each kid gets a pair of sneakers, church shoes, boots and sandals each year. The younger ones often have a pair of “Yard shoes” also. Hand me down sneakers to wear during messy outdoor play. Everyone 12 and older keeps their shoes in their closet, but the younger ones each have a shoe tub for their own shoes in the bottom of the foyer closet. Thanks for sharing!
We DO NEED to limit our shoes. LOL We have WAY too many. We don’t have anything special we do to keep shoes neat here, but whenever I was living with my parents…my dad was one who LOVED working in his workshop…he made a sugar bin (yep, a sugar bin LOL) and my mom threw the shoes in there (instead of the sugar). Who would’ve ever guessed?!?
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God Bless! J
Lay them out on Saturday night or one will have disappeared by time to leave for church. This makes fathers crazy when it happens repeatedly. It isn’y good for mothers either. -Melissa
We have a shoe basket that you are required to drop your shoes in as you come into the house. However, we need to reduce the amount of shoes in there. I like the idea of only letting them have two sets of shoes in there at a time. If only I could follow that rule!
Ah, practicing what we preach. I am very good at setting up the system but usually fall down on the job at enforcing it! I need to start paring down again, I can feel it!
[Kim - please feel free to move or edit this comment as you see fit...and forgive me if I've committed a breach of blog etiquette by changing topics - I didn't know where else to put this...]
Could you also post your thoughts on modest clothing for young girls? I’d love to know where other moms find clothing for their daughters. It is difficult, at best, to find clothing for my girls, aged almost 11 and 8, that isn’t immodest or revealing, but that allows them to look like young ladies…
thanks again!
We keep a big plastic bin in the garage for shoes. EVERYone’s shoes. Doesn’t always smell nice in there, but at least they’re all in one place.
We have a cute little shelf I bought at Bed, Bath and Beyond along with two little baskets. The shoes get lined up neatly under the shelf and on the bottom shelf (one pair per person). All that “stuff” gets dropped in one of the baskets for later sorting. It looks nice…and it is my 3yo’s job to straighten the shoe, a chore he takes quite seriously. He also monitors and scolds anyone with a second pair.
That’s how we did it when the kids were little – 2 pair per kid plus a pair of sandals in summer.
Now I have a teenage daughter. Life changes. Hah!
A shoe basket by the front door – introduced after I fell (with the baby in the sling) over a pair of shoes at the bottom of the steps. Shoes that I couldn’t see because I had a big baby in a sling! Most of the shoes are usually in or around the basket. Occasionally I weed out the less-often worn ones (since we have more than 2 pairs per person!) back to the shoe organizer in the bedroom closet. And there are ugly shoe marks on the wall around the basket since I always seem to hit the wall first when tossing the shoes towards the basket!
Great thoughts, but what about shoe smell? Have you ever walked in your house (or someone elses) and been knocked over by a foul odor to look around and realize it’s shoes? This happens in particular in bad weather, when you don’t want muddy shoes in closets, so they’re left at the door. What do you do about shoe odor?
Chrissy,
No problem – I’ll try to post on that soon as well. I’ve been given so much food for thought lately!
Anybody else want to jump in and help on this one?