How to Store Your Sneakers

Calum Marsh
·5 min read

Collage: Gabe Conte

One of the first problems you encounter when building a sneaker collection? Sneakers take up a lot of room. Your closet might work fine for the first half-dozen or so pairs. But what do you do once you’ve got dozens—even hundreds—of kicks to contend with? You can only stack orange Nike boxes up against the wall for so long before your home begins to resemble a Foot Locker outlet. And if you happen to share your living quarters with another person, you’re especially going to need a better long-term solution for storing all those precious grails.

The good news is that there are more ways than ever to keep your sneakers off the floor and looking good—less like a cinephile’s huge early-2000s DVD collection and more like something a real interior designer might actually sign off on. Here are four simple options to help you finally get your collection organized, tidy, and out of the way.

Option 1: Fabric Boxes

Skubb Shoe Box

$10.00, IKEA

This is an easy, inexpensive storage solution for anyone who doesn’t want to spend or fuss around too much. Ikea makes a dirt cheap set of polyester boxes that require absolutely no assembly and will keep your shoes safe, clean, and more or less fresh with air circulation and room to breathe. These fabric boxes are stackable and sized so that they can slot directly into many of the company’s popular shelving units—which means that you can easily cram dozens of shoes onto shelves you probably already have at home. (They can also be stacked on the floor or on top of other, non-Ikea shelves, and because they’re not big and are plain and white, they’re fairly discreet.)

You can also keep on buying more and more of them, which makes this a decent solution for anyone whose collection might expand over time. Just don’t expect this to be a hugely eye-catching option—these boxes are inexpensive for a reason, and the style won’t show off your kicks in a way that will impress visitors.

Option 2: Plastic Boxes

Stackable Shoe Storage Box

$55.00, Amazon

This is how I personally store my sneaker collection, and I really can’t recommend it enough: Simple, clear plastic storage boxes are easy to stack and look fantastic on display in any room. Amazon has literally thousands of different listings available, all virtually indistinguishable from one another and usually including some variation of magnetic doors and clickable sides and bottoms. These boxes are completely transparent, which means that your sneakers will be on proud display for all to see, and also keep your collection neat and tidy over time—no dust, no moisture, and therefore no mold or disintegration.

They’re not cheap, per se—they run about $40 for a set of six, and for a sizable collection you’re going to need several dozen. The good news, however, is that there’s really no limit to how many of these things you can stack together. Need room for more? Expand upwards, sideways, wherever you have a little extra room. The only thing to look out for is the size of the box itself: Most models are designed to fit shoes up to about a size 12 (I wear a size 11 and my shoes just barely fit snugly), so collectors with larger feet may need to look elsewhere.

Option 3: Floating Shelves

Floating Shoe Display

$29.00, Amazon

This is a deluxe option that you’ll see all over social media, as it tends to be the most extravagant way to show off a collection. A set of floating shelving units, also known as levitating shoe walls, are similar to the displays you see at shoe stores, only twice as deep so that you can store a pair of shoes rather than just one at a time. You’ll also typically see these units laced with LED lights and other fanciful display options, which I personally find a little tacky. I would caution you to avoid purple lights beneath your shoes, unless you’re really into “man cave” setups or over-the-top gaming rooms.

The best thing about these shelves is that they take up an extremely minimal amount of space and are a good way to let the room breathe a bit. This allows you to build the collection into a wider range of room styles and interior decorating schemes, and the built-in negative space can make a large collection look less overwhelming. Plus, the open-air build means that these shelves fit larger shoe sizes more easily, which makes this a popular solution for collectors whose kicks don’t fit in standard boxes.

Option 4: Shoe Organizer

Shoe Organizer

$40.00, Amazon

Sometimes a shoe collection is just too big and unwieldy to have every single pair on display. If you’re looking for an easy way to manage your overflow, or simply get a lot of extra shoes off the floor and into something more reasonable, look no further than a simple shoe organizer.

These are not fancy solutions, but they work. A collapsable version like this one on Amazon can hold 16 pairs of shoes and keep them dry and dust-free. You can shove it into a closet, or store it on top of a wardrobe to keep it out of sight. Do we recommend using this for your Reverse Grinch Kobes or Travis Scott Jordans? Probably not, no. But if you’ve got a dozen shoes lying around that you don’t want clogging your hallway anymore, this might just do the trick.

Originally Appeared on GQ

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