Shoes in the Apartment

It's always interesting to me how people deal with shoes inside of their homes. There doesn't seem to be a universally accepted custom around what to do. Some people ask that you take your shoes off as soon as you get inside. I've even seen some families provide a set of house slippers precisely for this purpose; once you surrender your own shoes, the household provides you with a courtesy pair. Other folks will happily let you walk around with your own shoes on, regardless of what kind of flooring they may have.

In my own case, I was taught to take off my shoes when entering a home. I always thought it was a Chinese tradition, but according to at least one link on the Internet, it's far more prevalent than just in Asia. Regardless of where it came from, I always take off my shoes when I enter. Or at the very least, I ask people whether they want me to take off my shoes. If they leave it up to me, I generally take them off. It's more of a custom than anything else, but as you can imagine, there are plenty of health-related reasons why that might be a good idea.

The Mild Wife was raised in much the same way, so it wasn't even a question of whether we would remove our shoes when entering the house or not. Instead, it was more a matter of where we would leave our shoes. We didn't want to just throw them about and have random piles all over the living room, for example.

For the longest time, we simply left them to the side by the door. It was a nice, simple solution that didn't require much thought or effort.

Sort of like this

As you can see, there's even a bit of a nice, delineated space for the entry way. That particular bit of flooring won't let dirt or mud soak in, so it was well suited for housing shoes.

Eventually, though, we decided we wanted something a tad more elegant. Sure, a space on the floor works, but it's also not particularly clever. To be clear, we still leave a pair or two there sometimes. It's also not uncommon for our guests to leave their shoes in that space. It's a little too well suited for that purpose not to be used that way.

However, we eventually got a shoe rack. Specifically, this shoe rack from Amazon:

As you can see it houses quite a few shoes, solving the problem quite neatly. I was a tad concerned that it'd be a little too big when we ordered it, but it actually fits nicely by the door.

My favorite part, though, is the Mild Wife's nickname for it: the Shoe Garage. You may not have noticed it right away (I certainly didn't notice), but there's a covering that rolls down the front of the shoe rack. In the picture above, it's rolled up. That's actually what that bunch of fabric above the top shelf is; those three mini tracks at the very top are the velcro that keep the front cover firmly in place when rolled up. So, basically, our shoes can be completely hidden from view or they can be visible to everyone. Like a garage.

So, to sum up, how people choose to deal with shoes in the home is left to the owner's discretion. We have chosen to solve this problem with a Shoe Garage. Who knew that shoes could be quite so amusing?