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Most of the ladies I know confess to having far too many pairs of shoes in their wardrobe and I’m certainly no exception. Trying to find sufficient space to store my ever growing collection, and then arranging them all properly so I can actually see what’s what, is a real battle.

Imagine my distress when my other half moved into my house recently, adding his own extensive footwear collection to the mix. It’s almost as big as mine!

He had warned me he was known as the Imelda Marcos of the trainer world (he has dozens of pairs, including one pair in a box he’s had for over six months and hasn’t even worn yet) so I was prepared for those. What I wasn’t expecting  was the equally huge collection of formal shoes, football boots and work boots that followed.

Well, obviously the vagaries of female fashion, and the changing seasons, mean I genuinely NEED all the variations of colour, style and comfort in my shoe collection. But surely men only need three or four pairs at most? Where on earth am I going to put them all?

My current shoe storage consists of a smallish shoe rack downstairs that’s full up with mine and the lodgers ‘everyday’ shoes, while the rest of my footwear is stored in a big box in the bottom of my wardrobe. This regularly gets jumbled around when I’m looking for something in a hurry – it’s hardly ideal and there’s certainly no room  in there for any man shoes. So since he moved in I’ve been on a quest to find some magical solution to our shoe storage woes.

I’ve been looking on the internet for the biggest shoe racks you can buy. My first find was this amazing carousel rack that holds up to 36 pairs! Unfortunately though, it’s on a US site and I couldn’t find anything on that scale for sale online over here. I decided to share my ‘rack envy’ on their forum anyway and was told that they do actually ship to the UK – amazing!

However I’ve since decided against buying this one as (1) I don’t have anywhere suitable to put it, and (2) I’m not sure I like the idea of all those dirty soles staring out at me.

My latest plan is to find some racks that will fit into the bottom of my large fitted wardrobe, as it’s quite a sizeable area. I’ve found a 4-tier rack in John Lewis that I could fit two of, but even together they won’t have a big enough capacity (just 24 pairs).

Then I came across a website for Flexi Shoe Racks. These racks are made of plastic, so they’re not the most attractive option, but as they’re going inside a wardrobe I can live with that.

The genius part is that the rack comes as a kit so you can put it together yourself to exactly fit the space you have available and the various types of footwear you own. So you create smaller spaced shelves for flat shoes and much larger spaced ones for boots. And as the parts just slot together, you can easily move the parts around and buy extra pieces as your shoe collection evolves. Wow!

My other half’s preferred option is to build the perfect custom-made rack into the wardrobe himself, but as a concrete plan has yet to surface I’m going to bookmark the Flexi Shoe Rack page… just in case!