I purchased my first pair of ‘fashion boots’ in high school. Black, buckles near the heel, at a Speigel sale. I would lay them in the original box, which took up quite a bit of precious dorm room space in college. When I moved to storing them upright, the boots eventually cracked and peeled. They would have lasted at least one year longer by storing in this manner:
boots lined up in my closet
When I saw this boot storage idea all over Pinterest, the timing was not favorable for buying pool noodles. It was November, when nary a pool noodle is in sight. So when my older son and I went to the local sporting goods store two weeks ago (hello, April!), I bought four noodles. The skinny kind, for $2 a piece. Once we got home, he put them in the basement. Out of sight, out of mind, until a few days ago when I remembered them.
Does it work? YES! Although I left a dorm room decades ago, I have more shoes filling my closet now. Space is still at a premium, and finding a shelf just for horizontal boot storage seems like a silly idea.
How do to it. Pool noodles are very easy to cut with a serrated knife. Cutting doesn’t cause “foam crumbs.” I was worried about that. I cut the blue noodle into even thirds; the pink one was cut specifically for one pair of boots. That left me with one oversized segment, which I may trim to match the others. The idea is that no matter what length you cut, you want the noodle to fit universally into any boot. Using two noodles gave enough length for the storage of three pairs of boots.
Possible substitutions. I considered different options over the winter, when I was wearing my boots frequently. A rolled up towel may have worked, but it would come unrolled every time you wanted to wear your boots.
I currently view fashion boots as a kind of panacea — like superhero capes, this type of footwear seems to be overused as a way to hide your true height, imperfections on your shins and/or calves, the fact that you’re wearing capris and not full-length pants, your justification of a warm weather outfit during chilly days, (fill in the blank). I’ve curbed my boot wearing quite a bit as a way to stop the silliness and common-ness that I think boot wearing has turned into. I’m keeping them in storage until I can wear them in a sub-mainstream way.
If you have fashion boots, how do you store them?