The entrance hallway in our house makes your average telephone booth look like a grand ballroom, so there's not much space for abandoned footwear. We do take our shoes off when we come in, but geeeezzz...there's a place for them in the closet. I put one of those multi-level wooden shoe shelves in there and they do fit neatly and easily. Especially now that we have 6 extra feet living in the house for a few days we have way too many shoes.
I love every single person who wears these shoes, and I'm grateful that I don't come home to only my own lonely shoes, but I wish that all the people who I love would put their shoes away. When I put the shoes away myself, it backfires. First, the shoe-wearers get annoyed, because they can't find their shoes. "Where are my shoes?" "I can't find my shoes!!!!" "I'm in a hurry...Where are my shoes?" Then they complain "You put my shoes away. Why can't you just leave them out where I can find them?"
I could understand this if they were firefighters who had to jump into their shoes and get out the door to save lives, or if we had snakes and scorpions in the closet, so it was unsafe to put their shoes in there. But really...why can't they reach into the closet and get their shoes when they need them, and put them back in there when they do not?
Picture this: two kids coming in the door from the water park, taking off their wet flip-flops and leading a wet dog, who has waited to come into the house to give herself a good shakey-shake-shake, one husband going out the door and trying to find his shoes, and me, with a leaky bagful of drippy potato peels trying to get out to the trash (I know, I should compost, but I'm too busy rearranging shoes to compost) and the phone is ringing, but we can't find it because it's inside a shoe...Maybe this is a bit of an exaggeration, but I maintain that our shoe proliferation problem exacerbates domestic chaos.
The second problem that happens when I put the shoes away is that I feel resentment. Heck yeah, I do. And I try not to do things that cause me to feel resentment, because that means I'm making a choice to feel miserable and it's my own responsibity to choose another path. So what path? I've talked to the shoe-wearers and requested that we each keep one pair of shoes only "ready for immediate use" and put the others away. They agree but don't follow through. I could live with the pile of shoes but that bugs me too. But it doesn't bug me as much astidying them and having my loved-ones get annoyed and being resentful myself, so I guess that's what I'll do.
Maybe I'll start hanging my bras on doorknobs all around the house and insist that I need them there so I can find them when I have to put on a bra and run out the door. But they probably wouldn't get it. Also, I do have my own junkpiles in other parts of the house that probably bug them like the shoes bug me. Actually, I don't think so, but I can pretend because it makes me feel better.
question: any suggestions for eliminating this shoe-phoria?
mompoet - bitch, bitch, bitch (sigh)
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