Place to go Up or Down

The other day I was looking at the giant pile of shoes at my front door and I thought, "Boy, I really wish that I had a place to put these shoes." Then I realized that I do. They are called closets and I have two of them up in my bedroom. But my shoes never seem to make it that far. I blame my childhood. You see, when I was a kid, I lived in a house that doesn't have a floor on the entry level. There is just a small, tiled area with a coat closet and then two flights of steps, to the right if you want to go upstairs, to the left if you want to go down. In fact, when I was a kid, I gave this area a special name "the place where you decide to go up or down (witty, I know). The only good use for this place is to stash your shoes upon entering. (I also grew up with a distinct, mother-influenced hatred of wet shoe prints on the carpets.) Now that I live in a real house that actually has rooms attached to the entry, it is really hard to give up the "open door, shoes off" routine that I had as a child. I'm trying to create new habits though, since the first floor was turning into the sea of shoes.