It is this past Saturday:

I feel a sudden burst of energy. I had been looking with disgust at our mud room/shoe closet for many weeks now, and I am finally ready to Do Something About It.

First, I look up whether I am, in fact, able to donate shoes. I have some tangential awareness that places like Goodwill have been overrun by donations since the pandemic began (apparently a lot of people have used their forced isolation to do useful things??? instead of just stress eat and watch tv????), so I don’t want to dump my old shoes on them if they are already overburdened. I discover that DSW partners with an organization called Soles4Souls, collecting and donating gently used shoes for people who need them. I do no more research than that. That is enough to fan the gentle smoldering of intention into a flame of determination.

I put down my book. I leave Carla working diligently on her LEGO creations. And I march right into the pantry and get two big garbage bags.  One, I mark with a piece of masking tape that says “SHOES TO DONATE.” Then I march over to the mud room. I am full of resolution!

There, staring at the jumble of shoes in front of me, I sort of sag. The size of the job ahead feels daunting. And should I really be spending a sunny Saturday going through old shoes?

Well. I am not one to look a Cleaning Impulse Horse in the mouth, so I say sharply to myself, “I will do what I can do.” And I get started.

(It helps, admittedly, to take photos for this post. Nothing like a little blog accountability to spur one into action.)

Have I showed you our mud room yet?

It is my least favorite part of our house. If our house were just a teeny bit bigger – maybe with one extra room, maybe with one extra garage space – I would want to live here for the rest of my days. Except for the mud room.

As you can see, to call it a room is to flatter it beyond deserving. It is, in more realistic terms, a small alcove that connects the garage to the kitchen, and which contains a closet. And yet we use it to store many items that we need daily: Carla’s backpack and extracurricular activity bags (which, of necessity, hang on the handle of the closet door) (a door that doesn’t function — it no longer opens and closes properly, so we leave it open much to my chagrin), the shoes we wear most often, coats and jackets, scarves and hats and umbrellas. It is full to bursting.

Well, I know that we have at least a FEW pairs of shoes that are too small or underused or nearing disintegration. Hence this project. My goal is twofold: 1) to pare down the number of shoes we own and 2) to clean out and reorganize the closets.

I start by removing all the shoes from the closet and strewing them about the kitchen in a slapdash manner. As is so often true, the mess gets worse before it gets better.

One tiny closet can sure fit a ton of shoes! Also, I was surprised to discover that, so far this summer, I have have worn eight of the fourteen pairs of my shoes that were living in the closet. Obviously, the other six pairs need to GO.

Should I maybe have undertaken this project at the beginning of the summer shoe season, rather than living with snowboots in among the flipflops all summer? Perhaps. Would it therefore also make sense to wait until the weather cools, so that I can remove all the sandals to their winter home? Again I say perhaps. And yet we move on, because we have MOMENTUM and we dare not waste it.

The interior of the closet is a disaster. Leaf bits and grass particles and dirt and sand and gravel and mud. Yuck. It also appears that the walls have never been cleaned in the history of the home’s existence.

It doesn’t look TOO terrible in this picture, but let me assure you that it was GROSS.

How did the prior family – who had THREE children, not just the one – fit all their belongings into this one tiny closet?

I use my trusty zooper to zoop out all the muck. Then I spray the floor and walls with bleach spray and give them a thorough (but not particularly successful) scrubbing.

Much better.

Let us ignore the grout. It is a battle I cannot win.

You may be wondering why I made such a stink about this tiny little project that is now nearly done! However, before I simply replace the shoes, I need to share with you that there are TWO ADDITIONAL shoe storage areas in our home.

If I am to be thorough about this project, I need to clean ALL of them.

First, to the hall closet.

This is the closet in which one is supposed to store coats of visitors. That is never possible; as you can see, this closet is ALSO full to bursting. With shoes, on the bottom there, but also with SO MANY COATS. (Some of these coats are relics from high school and college — my husband’s high school letter jacket, for one thing — and would likely find their golden years just as fulfilling in a box somewhere. Some of them belong to my in laws, like the giant fur on the left. That’s a story for another time. Some of them are ancient coats I just can’t seem to part with — like the grey wool coat I wore while pregnant with Carla, and had worn for several years prior, and which I am sure is missing several crucial buttons.)

A close-up of the shoe situation, which is so dire you can’t really even see any individual shoes.

Perhaps the next project will be a coats and jackets pare down.  But let’s take it one step at a time, or we are liable to get discouraged/overwhelmed and give up, leaving boots and shoes all over the kitchen floor.

I remove all the shoes from this closet. In doing so, I unearth a pair of child’s boots that I have no recollection of buying. Are they Carla’s? She seems to recognize them, but upon further questioning it is clear she knows as little about them as I do. Are they snow boots? Are they rain boots? Who knows! They fit, so they go in the keep pile.

The slippers on the right are reserved for my in-laws when they visit, since we don’t allow shoes in our house. There’s also a pair of men’s shoes that I have never seen before. I move those to my husband’s side of our bedroom closet.

This closet is also filthy, though less so.

Again to the zooper! Again with the bleach!

Much better.

Upstairs, now, to the walk-in closet that I share with my husband. It is narrow but deep. Along one wall are my upstairs shoes. You know, the fancy shoes, and the shoes I wear rarely, so they live upstairs rather than near the garage with the other frequent-use footwear.

Some of these also have — deep breath — sentimental value. Let’s be clear, going in, that we are going to have to do some additional mental work to get rid of some of these shoes.

I take comfort knowing my husband has kept all his ties, even though he no longer wears ties. Perhaps that balances out the black work pumps I cannot get rid of, just in case I’m called in to some sort of business casual work event at the job I don’t possess.

I did manage to divest myself of a pair of sky-high wedges that I’ve had since college, and couldn’t walk in even then, and certainly would not be able to wear today without severe calf cramping and possibly a broken ankle. I also got rid of a pair of wedge sandals that I have had for a good five to ten years and LOVE and have never been able to replace with acceptable facsimiles. And I eighty-sixed two pairs of wedges that I never really liked, but have kept for years because they were perfectly serviceable.

Some good cleansing work. However, I did NOT throw away the white dress sandals that I have worn maybe twice ever and am unlikely to ever wear again. I kept them JUST IN CASE. Well. We are doing what we can and not an ounce more.

(One wonders why I hold so tightly to shoes when it is so very delightful to buy NEW ones for occasions that need something special.)

It is fairly tidy up here. I also get rid of a stack of eight EMPTY shoe boxes (why did I keep them when clearly I didn’t intend to store shoes within them?) and zoop up a moth.

Now that we have some room to reorganize, it is time to return downstairs for more paring down.

A wall full of my boots and Carla’s boots and a pair of my husband’s high school ice skates.

It turns out that I possess four (4) pairs of nearly identical black boots. Why? Am I single-handedly trying to bolster the black boot economy? Okay, two of them have tiny heels, so maybe those are… dressier black boots. Another has a tiny wedge heel and also seems to be on the daintier side. One pair is my favorite pair — my go-to black boots for fall. One pair has a great deal of scuff marks – this is probably the pair I wear when I know I’ll be walking through undesirable groundcover. I should get rid of two pairs. But which two? Maybe the boots with the small wedge heel? But they are in SUCH good condition. Maybe the scuffed up boots? But what if I need to go apple picking or something and don’t want to mess up my good boots? I cannot decide!

Let’s focus instead on the two pairs of brown boots. One pair I wear a LOT in the fall months. But the other… well, the other is the first really expensive pair of boots I bought for myself. I don’t wear them often anymore but… I can’t get rid of them. (I have a problem.)

Okay, so we’re keeping all the boots. I can at least divvy them up — the “fancy” boots and the beloved brown boots can go upstairs. The other three can stay in the hall closet until cooler weather arrives.

Moving on. I can get rid of the pair of winter boots I’ve had for seven or eight years now that I hate. I finally found replacement boots last year. I don’t love them, but I don’t hate them either. So out with the old. The new can take a spot in the hall closet, alongside my ancient Uggs. (What? They come in handy quite often.)

Also in the haul from the hallway closet are two pairs of boots that are too small for Carla, plus a couple pairs of everyday shoes she’s outgrown as well. It is much easier to get rid of her old shoes than mine.

I relocate my husband’s ice skates to the basement. I move some wedges and two pairs of my husband’s shoes to the upstairs closet. I put everything that I am keeping back in the freshly-cleaned hall closet and mud room.

Whew. We are DONE.

All right. After all that, I have two rather small piles to excise from my collection.

So well-used they are beyond repair. These are earmarked for the trash.

I manage to throw away ten (10) pairs of shoes. Half of the shoes belonged to Carla. I tend to buy cheapish shoes for her because a) she is going to outgrow them in a year or less and b) she is REALLY hard on shoes. I don’t know what she does to them — although I’m sure that if I paid a bit more for higher quality footwear, it might hold up a bit better. I am not yet willing to test that theory though. All of the shoes that are mine are at LEAST as old as Carla is. I can remember wearing those black wedges when I was pregnant with her. All the others, I’ve had even longer.

The hardest shoes to toss are these brown wedges.

Even in this flattering light, they are showing their age.

I love them, and have for many, many years. Since college, I think. I cannot find anything comparable, though I’ve looked for the past two or three years, knowing that the end was nigh. Finally, last year, the sole of one shoe cracked off. I kept the sole and the shoe, hoping to fix it, somehow… But I never got around to it, and I don’t really think it’s possible. Into the trash they go!

I set aside eight (8) pairs of shoes that I think I can donate. They are all in very good condition, gently used. Or, in the case of the beautiful Ugg slippers my husband got for me a decade ago, only worn a handful of times (they were too small, and this was in the days before everything had free returns so I just kept them).

I think these are gently-used enough that they can work for a new owner.

Here are the final views of the closets.

Mud room:

Mud room before and after:

Hall closet (very hard to see any difference, what with all the coats):

Hall closet before and after:

Bedroom walk in:

Bedroom walk in before and after:

Only in my house would getting rid of eighteen whole pairs of shoes make such an insignificant dent!

It has taken me under two hours to accomplish this much put-off task. Does that mean I will jump right in and tackle the coats situation? No it does not.