Closet Part 1 : Shoe Shelves

As I mentioned before, we're on an organizing kick. This past weekend we tackled part 1of a million many projects that we'll take on to get our closet up to par.

We ladies love our shoes, and although I was a late bloomer at developing that love, it has become a mild obsession.  We have these dividers that separate Chris's side of the closet and my side of the closet, which the previous owners used to store their shoes.

Initially, I put some of my shoes on these shelves, and some of them on the floor.  After that became somewhat of a nightmare with shoes on the floor, I tried to stack them on top of each other without much luck.  Everytime I'd take a pair out, I'd have to pick up at least 1 pair off the floor.

So a few months back I came up with the idea of putting baskets in these cubbies and putting our shoes in the baskets.

The idea was supposed to be that the blue baskets were Chris's and the pink baskets were mine.  The idea was that I'd share.  Bad idea...I took over with the exception of one lonely basket that Chris got.  The only basket of these that actually worked well was my flip flop basket on the bottom right.  I can see all of my various flip flops and just take out the pair I want.

For the rest of my shoes though, inevitably the pair that I want is at the bottom, so all of the shoes that are in the basket wind up all over the floor.  I'm one of those panic great ready people too...my bedroom and closet area slightly look like a war zone when I'm done.  I can be holding what I want in my hand and not be able to find it.  Point being, the basket method isn't a good one for me!

The main problem with the cubbies are that they're SO high.  My shoes get lost in there, and the top 75% is just a waste of space if I set my shoes out individually.

So what's a girl to do?  Add in extra shoe shelves with the help of her handy studly hubby, of course!

We had an assembly line going of mitering 1x2's (the braces for the shelves to go on), and sanding.  After we finished up with 18 of those, we got out the circular saw and continued our assembly line of cutting and sanding.

This was the basic idea of what we were going for.  1x2's for braces, and a shelf lying across them.

We measured half way up, got out our handy pocket level, and I held the 1x2's tight while Chris screwed them in.

Then we slid in the shelves, and wala!  We have ENOUGH shelves for my shoes!

The idea is to paint all of this.  You can see from the image above that we removed the closet doors for this project, so it's not a big deal that it's not painted yet.  We've got 8 trillion quite a few steps left to work on for this closet project, so we're waiting to paint until we're close to done.  It'll save us the headache of moving clothes in and out of the closet multiple times!

Do you see my empty shelf?!?!  I told Chris that means I get to go get TWO new pairs of shoes!!!  He put two pairs of his shoes in that shelf and then a few pairs on top of his jeans instead.  Sigh...I guess I have to share!

Shoes glorious shoes!!!!  I actually can't wait to paint this section.  I want to do a fun blue like my mail holder.  I know it generally stays behind closed doors, but the completion of this project makes me so happy.  It's hard to explain!

Oh, and the best part about this project?  It cost us absolutely nothing to create.  We already had everything!

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