Emily Has Things: i have/had shoes

I love shoes.

Okay, I know girls have to love shoes, but for real-- I love shoes.

The thing is, I'm not super picky about my shoes. I don't spend a lot of money on single pairs of shoes, I just spend money on a lot of pairs of shoes. I collect shoes. I have always received compliments on my shoes. Shoes, cardigans, and headbands. Definition of style to me.

Let's not get crazy, though. I have cool shoes but only in select styles. I dig flats. I like pretty heels, but I like them high, and I like them classic. I am no Kim Kardashian when it comes to shoes, though I will admit, these caged booties are pretty awesome. If only I were brave enough to wear them.

If I could, I would have a walk-in closet, and I would dedicate a whole wall to shoes. Not a new concept, but of course, in my little basement apartment, I don't have a walk-in closet, and my shoe wall is reduced to a shoe bin that I've been carting around since my freshman year at the dorms. And even though I hoe through my shoes every year or so, my shoe bin has lately looked like this:

Quelle nightmare!

47 pairs of shoes! Not only do my shoes not even all fit in the bin, but it's a disaster pile that is impossible to dig through. And though I'm as sentimental as they come, and I can argue, "What if I need them sometime!" as hard as anyone, I will always want new shoes. So Mr. Ames gave me the instruction,

For each new pair, I must get rid of two.

Those yellow heels, the green fake Keds and new tennies are my three newest pairs of shoes, for which I had not yet sacrificed to the shoe gods, so I decided to reorganize, beginning by making three areas of the living room: 1. For Keeps 2. For Maybe Keeps 3. For Probably Not Keeps.

Of course, there's the fourth group-- For Keeps Forever Because These Are Already A Late-90s Relic:

Eat your heart out, Melissa Joan Heart. My grandchildren had better appreciate these in 50 years because these will never get thrown away. I wore them to my 8th grade "graduation" dance and had my hair done at the salon and wished John Ferris would have danced with me. I should really give them their own box and stack them with my wedding shoes-- that's how real I'm being about them, guys.

After my sifting, I kept 29 pairs and put 6 pairs in a box to offer to the thrifting gods.

Red flats I wore to college convocation and are actually little girls' shoes; black flats I wore for the run of Pericles all fall semester 2008; sandals I got at Rite-Aid for $8, painted green heels I sniped from HCTO before a yard sale that were used in Thoroughly Modern Millie; navy grandma loafers that I got at DI, wore four times, then determined I wasn't cool enough to wear grandma DI clothes the way my friend Julie does (she particularly wears polyester and pleated pants very well); and beach shoes from Maine that were taken in this picture, and then determined to not be sacrificed after all because I can take them back to Maine where they may become suitable porch shoes.

I found12 pairs to be unfit (read: too stinky) for any other human to wear.

Goodbye red boat shoes I bought during Little Women and wore through England! Goodbye music note shoes! Goodbye favorite flats, and first pair of trendy boots I bought in my adult life for only $19.99, and best cranberry knit boots every missing one button! Goodbye Rocket Dog velcro shoes I found on eBay as a senior in high school after they stopped manufacturing them, and New Balance sneakers that saw me through all my folk dance years! Goodbye slip-on moccasins I got at the BYU bookstore for 40% off that were almost ruined when it rained torrential rain the very first day I wore them, and the yellow jelly shoes that never looked good with my ankles but were jelly shoes and therefore had to be worn!

18 shoes gone / 2 (for each new pair at a 2:1 ratio) - 1 yellow heels - 1 green fake Keds - 1 tennies = 6 new pairs for the summerrrrrrrrr!

Only we're on a budget, Mom, so I won't get 6, promise.