By Gail Marsh
Athletic shoes. Hiking boots. Women’s dress flats. Men’s casual shoes. Steel-toed work boots. Slippers. Water shoes. Flip-flops. So many shoes! Help! We need to figure out shoe storage in our RV!
Do the math!
Assume that my husband and I pack just one pair of each type of shoe listed above. That means at any given time we have as many as 28 individual shoes that need to find a home in our RV. Yipes!
Shoes off at the door
We’ve always abided by the rule: take your shoes off at the RV entry door. This rule has helped keep a lot of dirt, sand, pebbles, leaves, and more debris out of our RV over the years. The problem with our rule is finding where to put the shoes once they’re removed from our feet!
We started out with what’s called a “boot tray.” I bought an oversized one because we needed a place for our work boots at the time. An unusually wet spring meant that our boots were always covered in mud, so onto the boot tray they went. Over time, other shoes joined the work boots on our tray. It didn’t take long for the boot tray to become overwhelmed with shoes. Clearly, we needed something more!
Shoe storage ideas
The RV bed-base
You may have seen this idea because it’s been around for a while. The idea is good, in that you use otherwise non-usable space and make it usable. Here’s how. Hang a shoe organizer, like this one, and cut off as many rows of shoe pockets as you need. Use a staple gun to fasten the pocket rows to the base of your RV bed. Shoes will stay off the floor, out of the way, and yet available when needed.
Inside ottoman
We have a storage ottoman in our RV’s living room. I modified the previous idea by stapling two rows of shoe pockets to the inside of the ottoman. It works like a charm! (Don’t you love having dual-use items in your RV?) As an alternative, you can simply toss your shoes inside the ottoman, but they won’t store as neatly.
Wine boxes
Cardboard wine boxes feature inserts to hold and protect individual wine bottles. Guess what? You can put your shoes in those spaces to store them, too. Then put the wine/shoe box under the RV bed base or inside the closet. Hint: This idea works best for flats and lightweight athletic shoes. Boots? Not so much.
Cargo nets
These small cargo nets can be installed almost anywhere and will keep shoes off the floor, yet easily accessible. Position them on your closet walls, on the backside of doors, and more. This idea works really well for little kids’ shoes.
Coat hooks
Mount individual coat hooks onto a wooden base. Then screw the base onto an interior RV wall, about a foot off the floor. Slip a shoe onto each hook for convenient storage, like this:
IKEA shoe storage
Check out the innovative shoe storage ideas from IKEA. Most are very narrow and fit flat to the wall. They take up very little space, so are perfect for your RV.
Curtain clips
We slipped several curtain clips like this onto the rod in our RV closet. We hang our youngest grandchild’s shoe pairs on it. Shoes stay in place until we need them.
Save the box
My husband likes to store his shoes right inside the box they came in. The boxes stack neatly on our closet floor, saving space. Plus, no searching for “the other shoe.”
Tension rods
Make a DIY shoe rack by positioning two tension rods, both at the same level, one in front of the other, to form an open shelf. Then place the shoes on top of the rods. Note: You’ll fit more shoes if you stagger them, one shoe pointing out, the matching shoe pointing toward the wall.
Scrap wood and corner braces
If you have wall space, you can make inexpensive floating shoe storage like this:
Do you have an innovative idea for storing shoes in your RV? Please share it with us.
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