I just cannot bring myself to buy boot trees. I need them, but my Irish blood won’t let me pay $20 for something that will never leave my closet. But I was tired of my boots toppling over so I made enough boot trees for all of my boots and it didn’t take me longer than 30 minutes to make them all.

I used a box cutter to cut a cardboard box into squares that I could fold into thirds and stand up inside each boot. I didn’t measure anything – just eyeballed it.

First piece of cardboard cut.

There’s already a fold in this piece so I just needed to make two more folds to create a triangular shaped tube. I used a ruler held against the cardboard at the point I wanted to make the fold and then wrapped the cardboard up around the ruler.

Using a ruler to create creases.

Wrap some shipping tape, masking tape or duct tape around each triangle so that it holds it’s shape inside the boot.

Because I don’t like to see the cardboard sticking out of my boots I cut each set of boot trees to just below the top of each boot.

No more toppling boots.