Growing kids have growing feet, and we have a lot of shoes around here. Somehow, it’s almost impossible to keep both shoes of a pair in the same room of our house (why?!), and shoes become invisible once in a pile.
So.
For anyone who doesn’t want to buy those shoe racks that sit at the bottom of a closet (which take up floor space, are difficult to see if hanging clothes are in the way, and unfortunately encourage kicking off shoes “near” the shelves on the floor), here was my DIY solution. It also allowed me to make use of that weird nook space inside the side of the closet. This project was very easy, very quick, instantly useful, and WAY better than piling shoes on the floor.
Supplies:
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- Wood boards, about 1x12x36 inches
- Paint or stain
- L-brackets and screws
Step 1: Measure and mark shoe shelf placement. I initially thought I’d put a shelf pretty low, but then I realized it might be good to leave a decent amount of space between the floor and the underside of the lowest shelf. For now, my daughter can put her dirty clothes basket under there. When she’s older, she could put taller boots and heels on the floor as if it’s the lowest shoe shelf.
First, I found a stud along the back wall. Mine was about 8 inches out from the corner. If you don’t have a stud where you’re putting your shelves, you can just use wall anchors, which is what I had to do on the other side between the closet door and the corner. It really doesn’t matter if the two marks are the same distance from the corner or not – it might even help if they’re spaced a bit differently to help balance and support the shelf.
Once I had that stud marked 8 inches from the corner, I decided on 18 inches up from the floor. Like I said, I wanted a pretty good space between the shelf and the floor. If you want to run a lot of shoe shelves up the whole side of your closet (I would if this was MY closet), you could start lower to really commit that side of your closet to shoes.
With that lowest shelf’s placement figured out, I decided to put the next shelf 10 inches up from the first. Easily enough, I measured 10 inches straight up from each wall’s marks.
If you’ve got more shelves to do, just keep going up! I’d personally change up the spacing to allow for different kinds of shoes – flats on shorter shelves, heels on higher shelves, etc.
Step 2: Attach L-brackets. With my wall marks done, I took my drill and a screw, held my first L-bracket over my back wall’s mark, and drilled the bracket onto the wall, into the stud. My bracket only required 2 screws, so that was easy!
I then went to the other side where the shelf would run across the side of the closet and repeated this for that wall’s L-bracket, only this time I needed to add a wall anchor first. Finally, I did the next shelf’s brackets the same way.
I will say that, if you plan to put a lot of really heavy shoes on your shelves, you might want to add a bracket on the side wall too, near the center of where your shelf is going to sit. But really, just these two brackets hold the shelf pretty stable, and that’s also why it helps to drill into a stud.
Step 3: Find and/or cut wood for a shelf. I’m running out of scrap wood, but I do still have a bunch of cabinet doors. With an unusual degree of luck, I had 2 cabinet doors that were exactly 35 inches long – just what I needed to go across the side of the closet! They were 11 inches wide, too, which fit perfectly and would be wide enough to fit even grown-up shoes once my daughter’s feet get to that point.
If you have nice 1×12 pieces of wood, that would work nicely too. Just be sure to measure your space’s width and length, and cut the wood accordingly.
My daughter decided that she wanted her shelves bright yellow, so I painted them quickly before moving on. If you use real wood, I think staining them would look really pretty…or paint them, or wrap them in contact paper – anything goes!
Step 4: Attach the shelves to the L-brackets. To be sure I could get the drill under the shelf, I started with my top shelf first so that the lower shelf wouldn’t be in the way. Taking 2 little screws, I placed the shelf on top of the highest brackets and drilled the screws through the top of the bracket into the underside of the shelf. Repeating this for the other end, my top shelf was secure!
I lay on the floor and repeated this for the lower shelf.
That was it! Like I said, this was extremely easy. It’s a great use of that goofy space at the end of a closet, it still leaves the floor free for other uses, and it’s SO much easier for my daughter to store and find her shoes. It’s also low enough that there is still plenty of room to hang clothes on the far end of her closet system, too.
Now, I just have to talk her into taking the stickers off the walls. 😬
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