My shoe and handbag closet

Probably the most common question that I am asked on my blog is where do I possibly find room to store all my shoes. Well, I am not as lucky as some of my friends who have a walk in closet(a joy that I have never had and can only dream fondly of) nor am I like some of my friends who have been known to rent 2 bedroom apartments only to turn the second bedroom into a closet(Amazingly, I can say I have known multiple women who have done this.). No, I use my attic for shoe, handbag, extra book, and boxes storage. While it might be more convenient to somehow find a way to stuff all the boxes into a closet to prevent me having to traipse up and down steps everytime I need to retreive a pair of shoes or hangbag, I swear I live with the world's tiniest closet that can sparsely hold a small portion of my clothes much less more than have floor space for more than 8 boxes when I tried. Additionally, I like to be able to look at my shoes. Now, I am not just talking about taking a leisurely sit down to admire them; although I am not denying doing that. I mean that when I am deciding what to wear, I wish to be able to look over all my options to ensure I can make my most informed decision. My system also works for me because the attic has the just about the narrowest stairway to it possible making it near impossible to move anything useful like a bed or large tv up there to make the attic into a more "useful" room like an extra bedroom or media room as we had once envisioned. So, to appease those who have asked about my storage system, I have also included pictures of my shoe storage below.

In this view, you can see that I do have some sensible shoes such as hiking boots, flip flops, and Doc Martens which I have never featured in any of my shoe posts since frankly I tend to find them rather boring. I also, amazingly to my friends as I discovered last week when helping a friend move, own 2 pairs of tennis shoes which are not in any of the pictures as they are on another wall. My friends lovingly nicknamed my moving look Basketball Becca since me in basketball shorts and tennis shoes were such an odd look to them on me. I had to remind them that part of the reason that outside of work I wear flats, heels, etc so much as that for so many years these shoes were completely taboo due to a multitude of ankle, foot, and knee injuries. After having had to wear sneakers and crutches with dresses even, corrective shoes, and braces, dressier shoes are probably one of the ways I enjoy asserting my feminism these days.

In this view, you can see some of my book storage. I have so many books that my bookshelves and stacks downstairs are all out of space. So, now I have moved on to the attic.

Here, you can see how the shoes wrap around into the closet.

And, I use the inside unfinished area of the closet for extra flat storage. As you can see, I have misplaced one blue flat. I think it must be downstairs somewhere. As you can see, I originally began organizing the shoes by type. The flats are wedges are all together, but I soon gave up.

These are some of my handbags which I keep along other walls in my attic.