Shoes!?!???!!

Okay, I know one of the big stereotypes of women is that they all like shoes. I also know that I am severely outnumbered by people of the female gender in this household.(5 to 1 for those of you who do not know our family.) However, only 1 of those aforementioned females is over the age of nine, one of the others just started walking and wearing shoes, and 1 other spends all her time running around with no shoes because she cannot find any shoes to put on her feet. Then, every time I actually notice what shoes the 6 year old and 9 year old have on, which admittedly does not happen very often because I am not female (yes, I know, another stereotype, it just happens to be true this time), they are wearing the same pair of $10.00 Crocs that they wear everywhere! So you would not think that our family would have a problem with excessive shoes laying around, or even a problem with where to store our shoes.

Well, I wish that were the case! My wife recently told me that it was time to get the boxes of clothes out of the attic so she could put away summer clothes and non-fitting clothes and restock the girls closet with clothes that fit and were for the right season. No problem. Then she said she was also going to have the girls bring out every pair of shoes that existed in the house and go through those as well. Great, sounds good to me! I did not know how many pairs of shoes our girls had accumulated over the last couple years. It does not seem possible. When I got home today, here is what I found in the living room!

There are shoes everywhere!! Big shoes, little shoes, medium shoes, work shoes, play shoes, black shoes, white shoes, running shoes, boots, blue shoes, snow shoes, fuzzy shoes, smooth shoes, flip-flops, crocs, sandals, pink shoes, baby shoes, walking shoes, clean shoes, dirty shoes, shoes with holes, shoes with Velcro, shoes with laces, shoes with buckles, shoes, shoes, none of them my shoes!!! I was going to count them, but I ran out of fingers and I didn't want to take my shoes off to use my toes because I might not ever find my boots again!
I know what you are thinking, "He must have a good paying job to have a wife who stays home with the kids and can still afford all those shoes!" That would not be true though. Most of the shoes have been hand me downs from other families. We do occasionally buy shoes when we need to, but we always look for deals. The scary part is most of the hand-me-downs came from 1 family, from 1 of their daughters!! What does their shoe closet look like!

I think we will be getting rid of a lot of these shoes, since there is not enough days in the year to wear them all, even if each daughter wore a different pair everyday! I think we have plenty of shoes. Maybe I will start a shoe store! Anyone need some shoes for kids? Just don't tell the shoe store, they won't want the competition.