Children's Shoe Storage

I have 9 children. That makes for 18 growing feet. That's a lot of shoes, people. If I were to have to buy shoes, it would also equate to approximately the ever growing bailout package. (Did you realize that if the government had given the bailout to the citizens we could have EVERY ONE OF US paid our mortgage off and completely gone off grid with water, heat, and electricity?)

Ahem. Anyway. Feet. Shoes. And lots of them.

I am so very thankful for people who hand down clothes and shoes to us. I keep most of the decent condition shoes, as long as I don't have too many in that size and color. I will not keep a white sneaker if I already have one in the same size, but would keep another color.

We used to just throw them into a large trunk sized bin, but that made it too hard to find shoes when we needed a new pair or said child could not go to church because her shoes were too tight. Or worse yet... had Leprechauns stealing only one of them. Amazing how often one footed Leprechauns attack our house in the night.

This last time I did clothes exchange, I organized our whole system, especially our shoes. I got out the brown lunch bags. I labeled the side, and the bottom flap with the shoe information. For example - Girls white church shoe size 5. Put the pair of shoes in, turned them so I could see the flap, and slid them into the bin. When I was done, I had a whole trunk of shoes that I could tell exactly what I had in what size, because I was looking at all the bottom flaps. When Daughter #2 outgrows her size 1 youth shoes, I can pull out the bin, pull out the size 2 shoes, put the size 1 back in those same slots and we are ready to go.

This works for me! Head over to Rocks in My Dryer to see other ideas!