Do you ever have a storage situation that involves just shoving things behind a closed door and calling it day? No? Me either.

Just kidding! This post is technically re-post. I had actually shared it last year, but the content was lost during the Great Blog Deletion of 2013. Oops! It was one of my favorite organizational updates we did in our last home, so I figured it was a good one to share again.

Previously, our “storage solution” for shoes had been an old laundry basket and a broken down woven basket well beyond their years in use. It always looked like a disheveled mess and obviously needed some help. (The whole closet needed help, but that is another post.)

I found these great wooden crates at Michael’s and ended up paying less than $8 per crate thanks to some lovely 50% off coupons. Yay for good deals!

We used Minwax Polyshades (in Antique Walnut I think) to stain each of the crates. My hubby was recruited to do the dirty work, while I took a photo.

Once everything was dry, I printed out the number 1 through 4 onto cardstock, cut them out, and traced each one onto the front of the crates. Using a small paint brush, I filled in each number with chalk paint.

Then came the fun part of sorting and purging our shoes. You can see I had a little helper.

That is Maverick, one of our two golden retrievers that we lost to cancer this past year. I never realized how hard it would be once they were both gone. So many times, I still catch myself watching how I stand up from the couch, because they always loved to lay next to our feet. Or calling them to go up to bed every evening. It’s something I still do or think about most nights. Crazy how these furry guys and girls have such an impact on our lives, even with the simple everyday things.

Ok, back to the project. After I had everyone’s shoes sorted, we put them back into the closet arranged on a custom made shelf for the space.

It is amazing how much easier it find your own shoes when you don’t have to sort through 3 other people’s loafers.

So, that’s our shoe storage story. We can’t be the only ones who crave a little organization in the shoe department. How do you store your kicks? Boxes, baskets, bins or something else?

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We’ve recently been working hard to transform our dated 1980’s kitchen into something from this century. A major part of this transformation has involved primer/paint and few lessons learned.

We have been using oil based primer on our cabinets and it is the first time we’ve really had any experience with it. We’ve learned that the stuff sticks to everything (yay!) and that this stuff literally sticks to everything (boo.) Like the time my husband, Chris, got it all over his hands and tried to wash it off with soap and water. Not good. It just made it even messier and smeared it around more because, obviously, oil and water do not mix. So while he stood in the bathroom covered in stickiness, I did what any good wife would do and went to bed headed to the computer to search for ways to remove the primer.

We found that a mixture of olive oil and salt worked great to get the primer off and also gave his hands a good exfoliation in the process. (Who doesn’t want a man with soft hands?) So, when we dropped a paint brush filled with primer on the floor a few days later, I decided to try the olive oil technique on that as well.

That is after we found that a dry paper towel just smeared that primer around on the floor.

To remove the smear, I initially tried a mixture of olive oil and salt, but found that on our floor we only needed to use the olive oil. You can see how easily it removes all of the primer in this handy dandy video. Enjoy!

A few more details to take into consideration:

– Our flooring is vinyl stick tiles. I’m not sure if or how this technique would work on other types of flooring, i.e. wood, ceramic tile, laminate.

– This technique works on fresh spills and dried primer too, provided you add a little more elbow grease.

– Use olive oil to remove oil based primer and paint from brushes too!