The Shoes

My wife announced her birthday desire: let’s clean the house and simplify, giving away or selling things we no longer use.

Okay, we do have some clutter and items we don’t use. But we don’t actually sell stuff. We talk about it but we never get around to it. Witness the two leather bar stools in the garage. We purchased them online, used them for a few months and realized they weren’t us and replaced them. To the garage they went to await their next life.

That was about six years ago.

Agreement was reached that we weren’t going to sell stuff. We would donate items, except, we would trade books in. We had six piles of books ready to go elsewhere.

Bags of books were prepared. One was established for the Book Wagon. He took them all, and gave us a $50 credit. I don’t think we’ll ever run out of credit there, which is great, since we love browsing and buying used books from the Book Wagon.

More bags were prepared for the Book Exchange but we’ve yet to go there. Whatever they don’t take for trade in credit will be added to other bags for the Goodwill.

For the Goodwill, we filled three bags of clothing. Jeans that have shrunk. Shirts that are worn out, sweaters and sports coats.

I ached over releasing one shirt. I bought it at Nordstrom in 1998. Blue plaid, cotton, long sleeved with a button down collar, my wife selected it for me. It looked great, brought out my eye color, and I loved it. But now…the collar and cuffs are frayed. There are small pin holes and a rip a cat made with her claws. Sigh.

Into the bag it went.

Once I got over that, I turned to the shoes. I love walking, and have a life long habit of getting the max from my shoes. Finding good shoes and breaking them in is challenging. Keens and Merrills, Clarke’s, Nikes and New Balance, I don’t like giving them up. Okay, so the soles are holed from wear, or flapping lose, and the stitching has come undone and the uppers are separating, and the tongue is hanging on by a few threads. They can still be worn.

No, I don’t wear them any longer, I recognized. All those limitations prevent them from being useful, and they’ve been replaced. But, really, give them to the Good Will? Shouldn’t I just toss them? No, my wife assured me, the Good Will will find a good use for them and they’ll be recycled or re-utilized. She’s a person who  pays attention to these matters, so I accepted her verdict. They were taken to the Goodwill.

Last were the bar stools and a few crystal items. We have a ton of crystal – bowls, tumblers, tea, water and wine glasses, decanters – and we don’t use it. Actually it’s all boxed to protect it and stored in a cabinet. Our local AAUW is doing a rummage sale to support their efforts to empower women. We donated these items to them.

We’ve made a little progress. There’s China. More crystal. More chairs. More books. More shoes. Several televisions. Printers….

And maybe a few computers….