How to fit eight pairs of shoes in a cabinet designed for eight pairs of shoes

This past weekend, I made another Ikea trip. I had a couple things in mind that I wanted to buy (including their cheap breakfast... what better way to start off a Saturday!), but of course a large part of my Ikea trips always involve just browsing and seeing what catches my eye that time around.

And this time around, what caught my eye was a cool shoe cabinet, which also happened to be on sale. It stands about 3 feet tall and has two flip-down drawers that each hold four pairs of shoes. The drawer is split in two, so two pairs go in the top compartment and another two pairs in the bottom. Assembling it went pretty good, considering I accidentally did one step out of order and had to partially disassemble it to do the steps in the correct order. But then I went to load my shoes in.

Lo and behold, I could not fit two pairs of shoes in one compartment. One and a half, yes, but not the two required to make it the “Cabinet for eight pairs of shoes” that it was advertised as. I don't consider myself to have large feet, and the drawer was just under half an inch too narrow to fit four of my shoes across. So for me, I could only actually fit six pairs, not eight. Maybe when they said the cabinet holds eight pairs of shoes, what they meant was ladies' or children's shoes. Or maybe Swedes just have smaller feet. The picture on the web site clearly shows the open drawer holding four pairs comfortably.

Fortunately I wasn't disappointed, as I don't even own six pairs of shoes, let alone eight. My plan from the start was to use the top drawer for things like my hat, umbrella, etc. Plus, I thought the top of the cabinet would be a perfect spot to place my keys and wallet, since I recently relocated the small end table I previously used for that. But then I had a brainstorm, and discovered a way that I could indeed fit all four pairs of shoes in the same drawer—flip every second shoe upside-down. Problem solved!