I have been at war for years. A war with…….shoes. The area by my front door looks like a warzone on most days. Invaded with shoes. Old shoes, new shoes, clean shoes, smelly shoes. Shoes, shoes, shoes! They seem to multiply faster than rabbits.
I have tried every organizational tactic out there and finally settled on a basket to put our shoes in when we take them off. (It doesn’t work though…it still overflows.)
When my girls were younger, I termed the area by the door “Shoeville”. On any given day at any given moment I would impatiently declare, “Shoeville has too many members”. Or as I’d throw shoes up the stairs toward their respected rooms, I’d yell, “Shoeville members coming through”. The girls recognized mom’s “battle cry” and they were quick to run to the battlefield front lines and clean-up their shoes.
Years have passed and my girls are grown. Interestingly enough, Shoeville still lives on. I walk through the war zone every time I go out my front door. I laughed today as I surveyed the area. Once there were tiny little Mary Janes or Barney Tennis Shoes thrown about. Now we have “grown-up” shoes in Shoeville. As much as I wish I could find organization for this area, I have decided to have a new attitude about the war zone. Instead of a source of frustration, I am going to allow it serve as a reminder of the many blessings I have in my life.
I am blessed to have shoes to wear, some do not. I am blessed to have a family that thinks that our house is a home, some do not have families that love them unconditionally. I am blessed to have friends that are comfortable enough to kick off their shoes (in Shoeville) and make themselves at home. I am blessed to have a little puppy that just chewed up one member of Shoeville as I was typing this blog (no lie)!
I can not imagine life without Shoeville, USA. Long live Shoeville!!
2 comments:
We also have a "Shoeville", a few of them, right in front of the two main entrances to my house...drives me nuts!! I finally made three wooden crates with each of my kids' names on them and they've been great about putting them away! My husband and I?? Not so much, lol!
Danielle
organizationalhysteria.blogspot.com
I absolutely love your blog, Becky! I can totally relate to everything you said. At our house, I have always told each member of our family that it looks like a "Shoe Carnival" referring to the shoe store, and also meaning it looks like a circus/carnival instead of your "Shoeville" (I really love the name you chose, and it reminds me somewhat of Dr. Seuss' Whoville) from the time we also had little baby and little girl shoes in our front hallway that belonged to Kristin and Kaitlyn such as those little white baby shoes, Barney shoes, Beauty and the Beast, Cinderella, Mary Jane's, Barbie shoes, Lion King, and the list can go on and on about those ever-so-popular character shoes. We are a take your shoes off at the door family to keep our floors as nice and neat as possible. I also made many attempts at organizing our always growing "Shoe Carnival" by placing a shoe rack in the hallway, then later restricting each family member to have no more than two pairs of shoes in the rack at any given time. The rules were to put them upstairs in their closet, but it seems like our shoe rack was always still getting out of control, as we often got busy, but also lazy when we left way too many pairs laying around the front hallway. Ever since we got our two Sheltie puppies, we have learned to keep our shoes upstairs in the closet, or we can expect the bad consequences of having one or both of our puppies chewing flip flops or any other type of shoe that they can manage to chew! I see that you just recently lost a green flip flop member from your dog, too (is that Tilli or Zuzu, my guess it is Zuzu?) Anyway, what is so really weird and a coincidence is that our Sheltie puppy, Heidi (her middle name is Tillie, spelled a little different than your Tilli) just chewed up Kaitlyn's flip flop last Friday morning when we were attending the Good News Bible Club at LL Beazley in Prince George with Pastor Chris, Shelly, and other members of our church from Unity Baptist.
Life surely can be such a coincidence, and oh so funny! One of those "How cool is that?" moments! Love ya and miss ya lots, Becky! Hope you all have a great and blessed weekend!
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