Ballerinas, sneakers, boots, sandals, peeptoes, stilettos – the women among our readers will know the problem: whether they are intended to be comfortable, practical or quite simply stunningly beautiful, if there’s one thing you can never have enough of it’s got to be shoes! Yet once you’ve bought them, there never seems to be enough closet space to accommodate the whole collection. Maybe that’s because in the course of a life-time the average woman will accumulate around 200 pairs of shoes – and that’s only a rough estimate!
And of course these little treasures will want to be stowed away properly …
First of all, it is important to not just pile up all your shoes into an enormous heap or simply chuck them into a huge cardboard box. This is not only a rather confusing and messy way to store your shoes, it also inevitably leads to ugly marks and bumps, especially with the most sensitive models. Wooden shoe stretchers are a great help when it comes to preserving the original form of your favourite shoes as long as possible, especially if they have been neglected over a longer period.
But can you just put your shoes in the wardrobe? Doesn’t that – well – smell?
The biggest problem concerning the storage of shoes is that no matter how often you wash your feet or how much foot deodorant you use, you can’t stop certain smells from evolving. But who would want such a smell to spread to their freshly washed laundry? The reason for the typical, slightly musty smell of shoes is mostly moisture, and if they are not dried sufficiently, they can quickly take on a rather unpleasant smell. If you have been wearing your shoes all day, you should therefore make sure that you air them well afterwards. And if they are soaked from the rain, you should dry them thoroughly for at least 48 hours before putting them back into the closet. High levels of humidity can easily lead to unpleasant smells developing in your wardrobe – smells which linger in clothes and which are extremely hard to get rid of, even when you bring on the big guns like lashings of perfume and room scent to cover them up or drown them out.
One of the best and most efficient ways of combating excess humidity in small rooms or walk-in closets is to install a dehumidifier. A basic model, like the TTK 30 S for example, is most well-equipped to do the job. These ultra-compact appliances are not only really economical, they are also particularly well suited for continuous operation in small and heated rooms.
And as soon as you’ve got the problem of high humidity under control, then there is nothing to stop you from having a nicely orderly closet… because is there anything that could possibly be more delightful than having all of your favourite items of clothing lined up beautifully in one place? Apart from yet another pair of shoes, maybe …
Autumn is here at last. You need only look at the calendar – or out of the window. So make the most of the last sunbeams. The days are getting shorter and shorter – and the weather isn’t going to get any better!
