Women and shoes

It took me a few hours to take an inventory and organized all my shoes in the closet (and some from my parents’ place). Living in a small (well not that small) apartment in NYC, I have to store 95% of my shoes in the closet.

First I took them down from the shelf in the closet. Then I took 1-2 pictures of them. I downloaded the pictures onto my hard drive and create different folders for different season shoes. I was totally shocked I have over 40 pairs of shoes (boots, casual shoes, working shoes, formal shoes, sandals etc…all included). I know I have a lot of shoes but over 40 pairs was just not what I thought I have. I asked my husband how many pairs of shoes did he thinks I have. His answer was around 20. I told him, how about double that.

It is mostly summer sandals that I have accumulated. I have a totally good reason for this shoes madness when I was younger. I have small feet (I am a petite woman). I wear size 5 shoes. It is extremely hard to find size 5 shoes and it’s especially hard to find size 5 shoes that fit me and I that I like. I complain to my friends and family that sometimes even if I am willing to pay a higher price for a pair of shoes, there is none in the market for me to buy. So when I find a pair of shoes that I love, I would buy 2 (sometimes). Thus, my craziness of accumulating this many pairs of shoes. Did I mention that some of the shoes I have are still new (haven’t worn yet).

After separating my shoes by season, I assigned each pair of shoes a number on the downloaded pictures. I put them back into the shoe box and have the numbers label on the shoe box as well. I do not have all 40 shoes boxes but I do have more than half of them. For the rest of the shoes without a shoe box, I put them in a bigger box or a big plastic bag and label them with the shoe’s numbers. I put the out-of- the-season shoes (winter boots and shoes) all the way in the back/inside of the shelf in the closet. I have the summer and more casual shoes in the front which I can easily reach when I needed. When the seasons change, I will rotate.

My goal is to check which shoes I want to wear by the computer picture before going to the closet and look for that number in the shoes box. This way I don’t have to waste a lot of time opening each shoe box to what is inside and then have to put everything back. This project took me a few hours but I felt relief when it was done.