Reward boots

It was a beautiful fall day, and I was only a little bit sick, so I decided to do my first round of the Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up technique (the author calls it the KonMari method). I decided to start with something specific and manageable: my shoes.

I gathered up all my shoes in one place, ferreting them out of their various storage spots, even remembering the old slippers under my nightstand and a pair of flip flops hanging out in my bike pannier.

All together now

Maybe some people would naturally think to look at their shoes this way, but I never have. Just taking this simple step of collecting them all in one place was illuminating. I had 31 pairs of shoes. 31 pairs! Who would have guessed?

Next I went through each pair, holding them in my hands, asking the question Does this spark joy? Soon I found myself talking to my shoes, remembering the circumstances of buying them, or when I most frequently wore them. This might sound strange, and I felt awkward doing it for about three minutes, but for someone who already tends to personify objects and who easily forms attachments to physical items, I have to admit that it came quite naturally to chat up my shoes.

One pair of moldy, falling-apart snow boots went in the trash. I remembered how I bought them in New York City, in the middle of a giant snow storm when my sneakers were soaked through. I thanked them for keeping my feet warm, and for reminding me of the strange joy of emerging from a subway stop, after an all-night flight, to find a world transformed by white.

The alpaca fur-and-leather slippers from Peru. Those were hard to part with despite the fact that I had worn completely through the leather under the heels and they were unwearable. I remembered how Mikhail and I sussed out the absolute best place for buying these slippers, from a vendor who sold them at the top of a pass between Cusco and Lake Titicaca, and the next time we came through, we used the brief bus stop to go on a rapid-fire shopping trip. I remembered wearing them on the ice-cold floors in our Cusco apartment. How, even once we were living in San Diego, I loved sliding my feet into them because they reminded me of Peru. I remembered wearing those slippers in the middle of the night, when my early labor with Elan switched to active labor, and I realized beyond doubt that this baby was in fact coming two weeks early, and my life was about to be fundamentally changed.

There were the flip flops I had long since replaced and meant to get rid of, but kept around still. The clogs too. Both of them worn down, unstable underfoot, but still there.

The professional-style boots I wore when I worked in an office in San Francisco fifteen years ago. The high, camel-colored boots that were sexy but uncomfortable, and not very good quality.

All these old versions of myself, in their various stages of disrepair. I held each in my hands, asked myself whether they sparked joy, and tried to listen for the authentic answer.

The ballet shoes were a yes. I didn’t even remember I had them, but when I held them, I felt joy. The bright red heels were a yes. The strappy black heels that I wore to dances back in high school were a no, despite the fact that they still fit and I still loved their sparkle. They were ready to move on, to give someone else joy.

Ten pairs of shoes went on the street. Within two hours, five of those pairs were gone. The rest went into the donation bag or the trunk of my car, to be offered to people I thought might like them.

Thank you for your service, and goodbye

That left 16 pairs in the house and 15 pairs gone. In less than an hour, I had culled half my shoes.

What I kept fit neatly into one of the shoe drawers downstairs (which, ironically, had become depopulated of shoes) and in the shoe organizer hanging in the guest room closet (which, ironically, contained only one lonely pair of Mikhail’s old sneakers). A few of my most-used pairs went on the shoe shelves we have outside the door.

What I kept

It felt light. It felt good. It felt like it was time to buy that new pair of boots that I had been wanting for three autumns.

Hey, a girl’s gotta have rewards.

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