Wednesday, June 23, 2010

Shoe Drama

The other weekend, while I had water boiling but no husband to kill chickens, I decided to tackle the back side of the front door.  That is, the little space that is behind the door when the door is open.  It had become very scary back there.  

The width of the area is about 3 feet; when the door is open it's completely obscured (too bad I can't host company with the door always open).  It's about 5 feet deep, but the back 18" or so is a set of plastic garage-style shelves, which fit - TIGHTLY - in the spot.  These hold boxes of seasonal stuff (like a bike helmet, garden hat and gloves, scarves, etc), a carseat, random mess that gets tossed that direction...  Once upon a time it held some bins labeled nicely with the names of my offspring.  The wall along the right is coats.

But when the floor between you and the bin is knee-deep in boots, shoes, coats, gloves, scarves (someone dug through a box), sandals, slippers, socks, swimming suits (?), an umbrella stroller, a beach umbrella, dirt, grime, and spiders... well, you abandon the bin in favor of the "toss and walk" method.  Which oppresses this mama.  

I began my excavation expedition, and before long no one could get into the hallway, up the stairs, in or out the front door...  I sorted JUST kid shoes, and my exasperation was palpable.  How is it, with only three, THREE, (3!) children who can even walk!, that I had some sixty (SIXTY, 60!)- ish! pairs of shoes represented!?!??!  I say "represented" because, well, never mind.

It's a good thing we don't have near neighbors, because I wedged the front door open and pitched many pairs and representative-of-pairs out the front door, not altogether silently.  The children ducked, then gathered them into vehicles of disposal without question.  At least, without question once they saw my steely jaw.

[Steely jaw?  What is that, anyway?  I guess I'm the Shoe Terminator.]

I filled most of the stairs, lining up pairs and assigning a "size" to each stair.  And Little Artist is still perplexed by her size 12, and her BIG sister's size 2.  Then I went and stole some of Hubby's boot boxes, and put a size or three in each.

Here is the box for size 3 and 4.  The pair in the top center was Big Sister's first pair of shoes.  Baby wore them the other day.


I bothered to take such a silly picture - of each box - because I then printed out a very poor black-and-white copy of them, which I taped to the outside of the appropriate box, marking the size with a Sharpie.


I made one box for slippers, since they are seasonal and we'll just dig into that and figure out what fits who each fall.   I did the same with our modest assortment of rubber/winter boots.

I also kept a box of "orphan" shoes (a.k.a. "representatives") on the shelf of things I was certain (or at least hoping) had mates around (and yes, some of them have been reunited!).  The "currently in use" shoes got a new home in a 3-drawer sterilite contraption.  So far it's working to a point; the point being when anyone bothers to get their shoes in that general direction, they end up in the drawers.  But that's only when they aren't dropped in the bathroom or bedroom or living room or porch or chicken coop or...

[Yes, oddly enough, I often find Organique's shoes in there.  Right next to the busted eggshells.  :]  For awhile she enjoyed knocking the cinderblock and board off the feeder, and climbing in to feel the feed with her toes, I guess!]

So now we have most of the shoes put up where moth and rust might destroy, but probably not the progeny.  And they were definitely the bigger threat.  :)

6 comments:

Tammy said...

Yes, it's crazy how many shoes can pile up, I have the same problem on my back porch. You said that when the door is open the whole area is hidden; what about having in nice screen/storm door installed? I would be lost without our's; it lets in air when it's nice out, and light in when it's cool out (and the glass is in place instead of the screen). They lock so the little ones can't get out, too. Then you could get by "keeping the door open when company comes"!
Nice blog.

EllaJac said...

That's an interesting thought. We do have a screen door on our back door, but we rarely use it as such. It's a good wind meter though: It will come open and SLAM! against the house just below our bedroom. Hehe!

However, at the rate every other screen goes in this house, I don't know that it would be any good. That's actually the subject of my next blog post, if I can finish it... :)

Thank you for your visit and comment!

MamaJ said...

Every time I come to your blog and see the first line of this post, I giggle. "The other weekend, while I had water boiling but no husband to kill...chickens." It just makes me laugh that chickens fell on line 2.
Sorry, I need to get a life...

EllaJac said...

haha! That's funny. You never know how it'll format once it hits the page...

And if I can ever finish any of the posts I have started, maybe you'll get something new to look at when you check here! :P

Cara said...

:) The shoes do pile up! For a while I was doing well with only one pair of shoes per child. Until they discovered puddles, and one pair is always wet (they can find puddles when there are none!) so now they have two. We'll see how long this lasts :)

EllaJac said...

Cara, you are doing better than me! We have dress shoes, sandals, tie/athletic shoes, and a few rubber boots in "current" circulation. Although "Organique" seriously does not understand that we do not wear fancy dress shoes into the chicken house, on the [improvised] slip-n-slide, etc...!