Shoe storage in apartment living

Ahhhh this is a problem that has bugged me for some time now and after many years I still haven’t found a solution.  The problem is

How do you store 100 or so shoeboxes in a 2-bedroom apartment?

My humble beginnings started something like this:

However I ditched that reasonably early on because I found the dust factor unbearable, especially given I often have shoes sitting on the shelf untouched for many many months (due to the number of shoes on rotation).  I decided to start storing the shoes in the original boxes to prevent dust from settling in, but needed to upgrade my shelf to this setup:

As the number of shoes increased, the space on my shelf decreased.

I bought some cheap shelving units to store the additional shoes and that was fine for a while.  Now I find myself living in a reasonably large 2 bedroom apartment and have taken over the entire linen closet with my shoes:

Current shoe storage 

But alas I am again running out of room!

I found some great shoe storage ideas such as

Shoe wheel

Designer shoeboxes

The first option is not space efficient at all which is mainly what I’m looking for in a solution.  The second option requires a wall or a certain slice of floor space which I sadly cannot spare. When I buy a house, I plan on having a walk-in-wardrobe big enough to house all my shoes (excuse me while I drool at Mariah Carey’s wardrobe…)

But for the time being I (and my shoes) are staying put in this apartment so I’m looking for an alternative solution.  Getting rid of some shoes is NOT a valid solution 🙂

Do you live in an apartment?  How do you store your shoes?

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