This SUPER space saving and surprisingly sturdy DIY shoe rack is part of our New Year de-cluttering effort, starting with our closet shoe storage.

The design idea behind this easy DIY shoe rack is:

How to utilize the depth of a standard closet for the most efficient easy shoe storage.

Because we do not need to see BOTH shoes on a shoe storage rack, they can be placed one behind the other. Our DIY cardboard shoe rack is designed to hold 2 shoes, one behind the other.



This durable DIY shoe rack is entirely made of cardboard. When you move, just recycle it and make a new one for your new place. It is great for people who move a lot and people who live in small space homes or college dorms.

I can honestly say that this cardboard closet shoe storage rack has made such a huge difference! I really enjoy using it, and the look isn’t too bad for something made from… cardboard! Here’s our fun and easy tutorial…

Step 1: creating the basic unit of our DIY shoe rack:

You probably know that I am inspired by modular geometric designs from this post – DIY concrete geometric planters.

We are utilizing the modular geometric quality of the equal sided triangle again! Each module here is a triangular tube, the length and size of the module depends on your shoe size! (My shoe size is US 7, so the modules I made are 7″ on the sides, and 24″ long each.)

Cut a piece of cardboard to the size you need, mine is about 21″x24″. Score it into 3 equal sides.

Use a piece of duct tape and tape the piece into a triangular tube like shown above.

Step 2: create more units: one for each pair of shoes.

I made 13 modules total. Glue or tape each row onto thick cardboard so they stay together.

Step 3: connect the units to create the shoe storage rack

Glue each row of shoe storage units onto a piece of cardboard as shown below. Stack the rows up. Our closet shoe storage rack has alternating stacking rows of 4,5, and 4.

Slide each pair of shoes in a triangular opening, one in front of the other. I also put an extra piece of thick cardboard on top of the shoe storage rack to put some odd sized boots.

Now we have a cool and compact DIY shoe rack that holds more shoes in a small area than most shoe storage rack you can buy! Plus it fits inside our closet perfectly.

I love the possibilities of cardboard as a creative material! Like this set of furniture made with cardboard and duct tape!

And this useful seed organization box made from 2 shoe boxes-

Happy organizing! See you next week!