shoe fly, don't bother me

Shoes!

Enormous, smelly, muddy, sweaty, clean, dirty...Piled in the entry way, tucked under the backpack hooks, trippable objects on the mat in front of the front door, and sometimes even (thanks to Guess Who 15) on the couch, they seem to be everywhere except where they are meant to live. Which in our house is in two official places.

One is this old tulip bulb box that I love. It lived for a long time in the front entry, and recently was exiled to the downstairs bathroom where it was a little too out of the way. It was found sitting empty. Our home is supposedly a shoes-off zone, so shoes should be coming off in the entry way. Back it comes to the entry. The original idea was that each family member has two slots for their "most active shoewear".

The other shoe home is a folding shelf in the front hall closet, where Minou and Mama Minou's shoes are rumored to live. This closet is also where we keep the giant dogfood bag and the shredding bag and my stash of items on their way out, as well as the more standard coats and jackets and board games and sleeping bags, so the shoes were forever falling off the shelf and having to be retrieved from the depths of who-knows-what. Not working. Out it goes! (this folding table was a free one I found curbside near the university and brought home, despite the suspicious burn marks)

Can you see the hiding shoes?

Minou has created his own shoe stash in his closet area in the downstairs bathroom, so his limited collection can just live there (he likes to keep the shoe boxes, so the shoes might as well live in the boxes and take up less space).

And what will I do with my own eight pairs...sigh. As I said before, for the family member who preaches minimalism, I also have the greatest number of personal clothing items. Well, jogging and gardening shoes live outside due to their yucky factor (these are the ones piled in fromt of the front door), and slippers migrate around with me. My new plan is to seasonally rotate. Sandals (3) now go to the attic, leaving me with just two pairs of everyday shoes...which will fit in the tulip box! Hooray. Space problem solved. At least for now.