Getting the Most Out of Your Closet or the New Shoe Rack

I had been dreaming of a nice way to store my shoes, and finally got around to making it true. I'd seen a lot of these DYI shoe racks made with crown moulding (kattolista for Finnish readers, I spent ages looking for the right term to google with!) around the net and they looked really neat. I thought about hanging it above my vanity, but the bedroom felt already too crowded. hen it dawned on me that I actually had an excellent spot for one! We have a built in closet that's really a weird shape, it's actually a lot higher that the doors, so there's space left on top that can't be used for shelves. The perfect place for a shoe rack!

So off I went to get some nice crown moulding, cut it to size (after realizing that I had actually returned both of the saws I had lent from my Dad, luckily I had a jigsaw I had purchased for cutting laminate floors for the previous apartment), drilled holes for the screws and then my other half put the on the wall. He's really particular about everything being straight and neat, where I'm more of a person who wants to get stuff finished fast with less than perfect results. That's why he doesn't let me do the drilling, and I'm not so fond of it anyway, so it's a good deal ;D

The silly closet. The space is way higher than the doors, making it hard to use.

One shoe rack in place! There's actually another one higher up, it's the same size, from wall to wall.

All of my shoes didn't fit the rack, because I have wedges, heelless shoes and boots too, but it has room for all of my
small high heel shoes and the top rack is still empty. That means I can buy more shoes, right? ;)

Another tip on stuffing the closets full: I hammereda few nails on the inside of the doors
and hung my bags there. That way it's always easy to pick the one you want to use,
unlike with my previous storage solution which was mainly a pile of bags.

The finished shoe rack with the (bent) clothes rack and my clothes back in place.

The rack was pretty easy to make in the end. The hardest part was drilling holes in the moulding so that it wouldn't break and the holes would be straight(ish, when I'm drilling). I still didn't break anything, just used a short piece for practice. Now the shoes are much easier to browse and are all in one place, I used to have small Ikea shoe boxes stashed around the apartment and it was a nightmare to try and find the right pair of shoes! Now it's just these, then two shoe boxes for wedges and heelless shoes, and a shelf in the foyer for boots. Plus maybe a few pairs stashed in my other half's own closet ;P