Hanging shoe organizers are a great way to create extra storage in a home. They can be hung on almost any flat vertical space, they are relatively flat so they can fit in otherwise unusable spaces like behind doors, and they have numerous pockets that can help keep small items sorted. While they are obviously great for organizing shoes, they are also incredibly useful for organizing other items around the house. Here are a few examples of ways to use hanging shoe organizers around your home.
Outdoor Accessories and Winter Gear
One of my favorite ways to use hanging shoe organizers is for outdoor accessories. Hanging shoe organizers are one of the most cost effective, efficient ways I’ve found to organize the chaos of all the small items that families need to be able to grab on the way to the car each morning—like scarves, hats, mittens, visors, and other outdoor items are small and can get lost if they aren’t contained. Most times these items are kept in baskets and bins, but that means that their owner usually needs to do a decent amount of digging to find them when they are needed. If that owner is a small child, it’s almost guaranteed that a mess will come from his foraging though baskets full of small stuff.
You can make it easy for all family members to find their outdoor accessories by keeping them in individual pockets of a hanging shoe organizer. When I’ve helped friends and clients organize their mud rooms and entryways, I usually hang one organizer per two people and then assign a few rows of pockets for each person. By putting one scarf, one pair of mittens, or one hat in each pocket, they can easily be grabbed when you are rushing out the door and replaced when you return at the end of the day.
An added bonus with these organizers is that they can be filled with seasonal items and easily moved to a less accessible area when they are out of season. You don’t need to have your winter hats available in July, but you do need visors, sunglasses, and sunscreen. By having only one season’s items in each organizer, you can quickly and easily move the out of season organizer to the basement, storage closet, or another more out of the way wall and swap in the current season.
Cleaning Supplies
If you’re one of those people who loves to buy and try new cleaning sprays and supplies, you may want to consider moving them from under your sink to a hanging shoe organizer. The pockets on the hanging organizer are great for storing bottles of almost any size in an easy to reach place. Keep sprays in higher pockets to keep them out of reach of little ones, and then use the lower pockets for rags, sponges, scrapers, and other cleaning supplies. This is a great organizing option to keep on the back of a laundry room door. It will be out of the way and out of sight, but still easily accessible when you need to grab a spray to clean up a mess.
School Day Outfits
Hanging shoe organizers are also a great way to help smaller kids learn how to put together outfits and dress themself each morning. There are usually six rows of pockets, with four pockets in each row. This means that on Sunday afternoons you can help your kids create outfits for each day of the week (with one “free day”) and put each outfit in one row. A top, a bottom, socks, and undies can each be placed in one of the pockets of a row. Every morning your child can pick a row and be set with a complete outfit to wear that day. You can step up this method by pulling out the outfit of their choice each evening so it’s sitting out, ready to be put on as soon as they are up and ready to get dressed. Not only does this method help younger school-age kids learn how to put together weather and activity appropriate outfits, but it also gives them limited options each morning. Limited options means less overwhelming decisions, which means that they can get themselves dressed quicker and you can get out the door with less fights over outfits.
Snacks and Treats
Another great way to give your kids more independence using hanging shoe organizers is to stock one with healthy, single-serving snacks. Your kids can choose from these options when it’s time for a snack or when they are packing their lunches. Some ideas for these snack pockets are baggies of nuts with a piece of fruit, granola bars, whole grain crackers and slices of cheese and salami kept in the fridge, cups of peanut butter with a bag of pretzels, and baggies of popcorn with a squeeze pouch of applesauce. If the kids are in the habit of picking out food from these pockets, you can get creative with the combinations of snacks kept in them. Just make sure to carve out a little time on weekends to make individual servings of snacks and stock up the organizer. The last thing you want is a hungry kid who’s really not able to find anything to eat when they go to get an afterschool snack.
Water Bottles and Travel Mugs
If you’re like me and have a bunch of travel mugs and water bottles crowding your kitchen cabinets, you’ll love this last idea. The challenge with these travel items is that they don’t always fit well in cabinets. They are often too tall for normal shelves, so they may just get thrown in a lower junk cabinet, only to be lost until someone decides to clean out the cabinets. If you are using travel coffee mugs and water bottles on a regular basis, it may make more sense to keep them in a more accessible space, like the back of a pantry door. And a hanging shoe organizer makes it super convenient to store a number of them in the same spot.
The best part about keeping these mugs and bottles in the pocket organizer is that it is super easy to keep all the parts together. You’re taking apart the bottles and mugs to wash them, and if they aren’t quite dry inside when you put them away, you might not want to put the lid back on. By tossing both parts in a single pocket, you know that you’ll never have to search for the lid to your favorite coffee mug when you’re already rushing to get out the door. Everything can be kept together to make it easy to get your caffeine and hydration, even on hectic mornings.
Shoes are just the beginning when it comes to the uses for hanging shoe organizers. There are almost endless ways you can use these versatile organizers. Maybe one of the ideas here is just the right solution to help you organize an area of your home, or maybe it will spark another idea that will be a real clutter buster for you.
Until next time, I’m the Domestic CEO, helping you love your home.
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