My life in shoes

By Suzanne

There are 5,397 pairs of shoes in the front hall of my house.

Okay, that's an exaggeration, but not by much.

I have three children. They each have a pair of athletic shoes for regular school days. Then they have church shoes. Baseball shoes. Basketball shoes. Horseback riding boots (pink, one pair of those). Playing in the creek shoes. Fuzzy slipper shoes. Not to mention the I-don't-know-whose-these-are-shoes no one will claim, but whenever I take them to the giveaway pile in the garage they somehow miraculously make their way back to the front hall because SOMEONE IS WEARING THEM.

I first became aware of the shoes-that-are-never-put-up phenomenon when my oldest child could put on and take off his velcro-closed shoes on his own and was thus responsible for putting them away. It wasn't so bad then. One little pair of size 4 Batman shoes by the door. How cute. Then I had another child, and another child, and their cute little feet turned into nearly adult sizes that I sometimes can't tell apart from my husband's shoes. And, oh yeah, he has about five pairs of shoes in the front hall, too.

Visitors to our house have to climb over Mt. Shoe Everest to get past the front hall and come inside. I'm sure they wonder just how many children do they have? I've tried various methods of controlling the unruly shoes over the years, everything from disciplining the children about where shoes really belong to stacking shoe compartments by the door to even building a hall closet in our old house AS IF THEY MIGHT PUT THEM AWAY THERE. No matter what, the shoes creep back. Before I know it, there are 5,397 shoes strewn about my front hall again. It's like fighting kudzu.

Despite this amassing of shoes in plain sight, the most frequent thing I hear in the morning as it's rush-to-make-the-schoolbus time is, "I CAN'T FIND MY SHOES!" 

::head bang::

I have moments when I imagine how beautiful my front hall would be if it weren't decorated in shoes. Then I realize there is only one way that I will ever have a clean front hall: My children will all grow up and move away. I'll probably always have enough milk then, there won't be a stack of permission slips and sports schedules littering my kitchen table, I'll never have to watch cartoons again, and no one will be screaming MOMMY outside the bathroom door.

Maybe I don't mind the shoes so much, after all.

Comments

[Avery]

We stack the shoes usually in the garage, but even so there is a massive pile there. Every 6-8 months I clean out the garage's massive shoe piles, give the kids (there's 7 of them but only 5 live at home now, the other 2 are married but close by) 1 week to claim whichever shoes they want to keep, everything else gets thrown out or donated depending on their condition. Generally, the boys shoes are tossed because they reek, are muddy, or just worn. The girls tend to do better with their's.

[Karen]

OOh I hear you! In our house, the internal door from the garage into the house is the stockpile of shoes AND socks... usually only ONE sock stays there, the other is put in the wash and then you know what happens....

My dear husband comes home from work some days, clambers over the pile of shoes at the garage door, and loudly exclaims "a millipede died on the doorstep again!!" :)) he only has about 4 pairs of shoes there.

One thing that seems to work OK some of the time is the laundry basket that now sits by the door - shoes get thrown in there occasionally (when people cannot walk thru without tripping) and at least they are all in one place and not tracking dirt through the house.

[maria]

Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh!! So it's not just us! We have the infamous "shoe spot" which is right inside the front door a little alcove beside the stairway and in front of the closet. My 3 kids know that they have to put their shoes there (okay 2 - the baby doesn't wear them yet) but the pile is so high we can't get to the closet... Last week I bought a door shoe organizer to put on the kids bedroom door - but they still all migrate downstairs...

A house full of shoes is a house full of love? Sort of like the never ending laundry

[Christina]

Our Mt. Everest isn't so much shoes, those are scattered around the house in every possible room and always directly where I am trying to walk. But I hear you about the gross numbers. There are shoes that I haven't seen my children wear in ages, shoes that don't fit, shoes that don't belong to them, shoes that they might just want to wear tomorrow. Like you, I've tried a disgusting amount of measures to keep this shoe thing under control, but, none have worked. I have to admit that every once in a while, my shoes show up in that pile, but it is INSANE. There must be a better way!

[Danica]

Ah, another reason why I won't put the youngest in shoes yet. I can't handle the one who's in shoes, and for sanity's sake, she only has 3 pair. Yes. I can see the solution very clearly. No shoes for anyone! And perhaps we will move to a nudist colony so that I don't have to worry about laundry anymore either.

[a]

maybe you could tell them to take their shoes of BEFORE they get into the house. (then you'll have a pile of shoes on your front stoop, rather than in your hallway.)

[Tori]

Too funny!!! We don't have a Mt. Shoe Everest at our house (I don't think Mom would put up with it), thank goodness.

[Julie]

That's great! Our shoe pile is surrounded by the objects of my misguided (and apparently delusional) attempts at neatness. It doesn't matter how many shoe racks we have, how close to the door they are, how easy they are to use--the shoes still end up in piles in the hall. My other pet peeve? My 10 year old who hoards new shoes in the bottom of her wardrobe and forgets about them until they're too small. I've caught on now...

[Rene]

We do not have a Mt. Shoe Everest in my house, we have the Sacred Valley of Shoes which encompasses my entire first floor. The truly mysterious thing is, however, when it is time to go someplace, the children can never find a pair of shoes.

[Jill]

We also have a million shoes in the mud room. Maybe a million and a half. And if I hear "I can't find my shoes" one more time, I'm throwing them all away so that they really can't find them.

[kacey]

LOL, I have this very same problem. Right now, as we speak, there is an unclaimed pair mixed in with all the stack. Which everyone has said to me "Mom, they aren't MINE" So who came to my house and left barefoot??

[Jennifer]

Lord have mercy- I feel your pain. Not so much with the shoes in the front hall, b/c our "front hall" is the kitchen, but there are millions of shoes in the closet and yet every day of my life is spent frantically running around the house looking for the right shoes.....