Kid Shoe Bin

Corral Kid Shoes

• What: Bin for kids’ shoes
• When: Ten months to college
• Why: Easily locate shoes, keep floors clean(er)
• Where: Your home

If your kid owns more than one pair of shoes, and you’re tired of looking underneath furniture for the mate to appropriate footwear, designate a place for shoes right inside the door.

Unless you let your kids drag all the dirt from their shoes into your house (in which case kudos to you for having time to do all that extra vacuuming and sweeping), your kids ditch their shoes at the door. Rather than stumbling through the pile of shoes generated by three offspring and two adults, I added a bin just for shoes by the door. While at least one adult in this house can open the front closet to both retrieve and put away their shoes, that trait doesn’t seem to be genetic. Now all three kids can plop themselves down and get the shoes they need and I don’t spend time searching frantically. (In all fairness, the dog will distribute any shoes left unattended, so it’s not all my kids’ fault. The end result remains the same, however.)

I also did the same thing by the back door, only this time we got even smarter and made the bins child specific. (We also have more room for that in the back.) Either way works, depending on how much room you have, how many shoes your bin holds, and how easily your kids can identify their own shoes. My kids typically have at least three pairs of shoes in any given size, including crocs, sneakers, and rain boots. In the winter we also have a few extra pairs of snow boots hanging around taking up valuable shoe real estate.