Purple Shoe Diaries

I have a shoe problem.

Specifically, in my closet there is a proliferation of shoes that I have worn out/used up/run into the ground.

Running shoes are not made to last forever, and so once you have run your 300-500 miles in them, it's time to move on. I do the moving on okay (I generally buy myself a new pair of running shoes once a year)--I just have trouble with the ridding myself of the useless run-out pair.

That's because I think of all the resources that were used to create my disposable running shoes, and I'm horrified. I know that I can take my shoes to a Nike retailer for recycling, but we're remarkably short on Nike retailers around here, so I have shoes loitering in my closet for years at a time.

The ruffians.

This weekend, I noticed that my favorite daily wear shoes--a pair of purple sneakers that I have owned so long that I honestly cannot remember when or where I bought them--have given up the ghost. The sole is visibly removing itself from the body of the shoe, and I cannot abide a soleless shoe.

So, despite the fact that I have a horror of throwing out my used-up shoes, I marched them right into the rubbish bin:

I don't know if there is much that I can do to find perennial running shoes that could be worn and resoled for years without hurting my legs and joints, but there's no reason my daily wear shoes should be disposable.

I was thinking that I would try to replace my daily wear shoes with something from a company like Naot, which makes very high quality shoes that are made to be repaired and worn for years and years.

While that would not violate my rules--I would be replacing one pair of shoes with another--I realized that there was no need to buy something just because I was throwing something away. In my closet were these gems, which still have years of life in them:

I may still eventually buy a pair of Naot shoes to wear forever(ish) as my daily wear shoes, but it makes much more sense to completely use up the daily wear shoes I already own.

Minimalism for the financial win!

What have you decluttered today?