Kids Shoe Rack
Introduction
October 9th, 2010
The closet next to our front door was a bit of a disaster area. It was a pile of shoes, boots, hats, coats, and gloves. We decided it was time for the toddlers to start putting their shoes and coats away in a proper way.
We wanted a sturdy wooden shoe rack as opposed to the flimsier looking plastic models. I checked around the web and most of the racks were around $30 ish. I figured I could throw something together for about $20.
The Cheapest Boards I Could Find
I started off by going to the hardware store and looking for the cheapest boards I could find that were wide enough and would fit in the trunk of the car. I had the kids along so I was limited to boards I could fit in a shopping cart. I found some four foot 1" x 10" standard boards for $2.25 each. I picked up eight of them. Four for the horizontal layers, one for the sides, and three for the spacers in the middle.I measured my shoes and I figured a eight by six inch cuby hole would work for the bulk of the shoes we had in the closet. My target height for the rack was 24" so I ended up making the spacers 7 1/4" inches long.Kids Shoe Rack Assembly
To put it all togehter I used 1 5/8" drywall screws Except for the side panels I didn't pre-drill any of the holes.
I ended up alternating the sizes of the cuby holes on each horizontal section. On the bottom and top rows I made smaller 6" compartments and in the middle I used 8" spacing to fit larger shoes. Another reason for offsetting the spacers was that it made it possible to directly drill in the screws to attache the spacers to the horizontal shelves. On the spacers the lined up on top of each other, like in the middle, it was a pain to drill them in at an angle.
Hood Ornaments
The whole idea behind this rack was to get the kids a little more enthusiastic about putting their stuff away. I thought it would be a good idea to mark each side of the rack so they would know were to put their shoes. I took some of the scrap boards and cut out their initials. They seemed a bit bland so I got out the paint set and let the kids decorate the letters.
As the finishing touch I added some coat hooks to the side and front of the rack so the kids could hang up their coats. All the other coat hooks in the house were well out of preschooler and k-4 range.
Action Photo
As of the first week the closet still looks picked up. Time will tell if I can get the kids to keep putting their shoes and coats away.
