why so many shoes? a reflection.

When looking at my closet, and bedroom in general (I also have shoes by my bed in a display) shoes are loud and clearly the biggest focal point. I have amassed an impressive (or crazy if you ask some people) collection of footwear. I only have two feet. There are only 7 days in the week and 31 days in the longer months so why have more than that amount in shoes, some people might ask. 

Well, I can't say I have a perfect response or reason to why so many shoes. 

I can say it used to be worse, I used to have nearly 100 back in NY when I had two closets and I was a frequent amazon deal/cheapie shoe lurker/orderer in college. I also often would buy discount shoes at Peter Harris outlet store near my campus.

Even when I taught abroad for a year, I would go to the mall and window-shop shoes and bought at least 5 new pairs that year alone. Sandals. Flats. Two pairs of boots. My first pair of Melissa jelly shoes because they had my name, so I had to, right? Nope. None of those shoes had staying power. Jelly shoes caused blisters on my feet and the material 'bubblegum smell' was nauseating. They were hard to clean and the color faded in the sun and got scratched very easily (I am certainly hard on my shoes and a bit lead-footed, stompy admittedly).  

When I first started teaching back in 2012, I first tried Swedish Hasbeens from amazon to be cute but practical (I hated high heels and so did my then boyfriend, now husband).

I was an instant clog-lifer and fell into the rabbit hole of the clog collecting clogerati community.

I started documenting my clog love and fashion preferences on instagram and on here.

I wanted all the heart swedish hasbeens that were made and I scoured the web daily until my collection felt complete. Looking back, it was ill-advised and a bit silly.

It wasn't long after that I tried Sven Clogs and switched my focus and loyalty to mainly wearing their shoes. I love their clogs, truly, and feel close to the company as they have supported me and send me beautiful custom clogs fairly often. I am so grateful. I feel like their spokeswoman sometimes. The endless array of heel heights, leathers, colors, and styles really speak to my collector sole.

And maybe that is it truly, that some people are just partial to collecting while others are minimalists or prefer to live more frugally as far as consuming goods and fashion is concerned. I admire the capsule wardrobers and 10 x 10 closet challenge doers. I would never do that unless it was a travel related reason, I love having the options of many choices to explore within my closet.

A lot of times, I start at the bottom up with outfits and plan looks around my shoes, or pick a color first and then mix or match with my footwear.

My main 3 shoe types are:

cowboy boots: vintage preferably, personality a must (no basic or boring western wear for me)

-clogs: I write a lot about them on here, see my Clog Diaries posts for more on those. The only brands I'm really into right now are Sven Clogs, Calou Stockholm, and Troentorp/Maguba. I have one pair of Swedish Hasbeen boots that I love and one pair of Tessa Clogs that I love, but I'm not really looking to buy more actively of either brand any time soon.

If I'm honest, I don't really want to buy more of any shoes at all for a while. 

I want to take a shoe collecting break and focus more on the collection in it's current place (around 65 shoes, I'm pretty sure at last count).

I try to keep my less-worn shoes still on display but on the shelves away from the other shoes. I also cycle out my shoe displays about 4-6 times a year, usually for seasons or just at a whim based on what I'm gravitating most towards. I took a pretty long break from wearing my dr. martens this year and have just started wearing them again more frequently. I brought the 3d floral ones to Hawaii and got so much love for them! I also greatly regret spending as much as I did on my white bow detail docs because I just don't wear them that much at all. Hoping to find the inspiration to style them again sometime soon. We'll see! Whenever I see them in photos, I think they look so cute and unique. Maybe I just need to give them more of a chance to shine. The lumpy space princess ones are SO cool and I got a great deal on those. I just feel like they are a bit smaller fitting since the inside is so padded so I can't wear them as long unless I really push myself to break them in more. They were hardly worn at all by the owner I bought them from.

All the way on the left on the bottom are my $7 Italian vintage brogues that I repainted a teal blue and re-threaded with matching suede string to replace the faded brown. 

In a time in my life where my weight has fluctuated more than it ever has with my disease appearing and coming to a head I also clung more than ever to my shoe collection and fixation because my shoe size didn't change in those 5 or so years. 

Some steps I'm taking to curb my shoe shopping include blocking all cookies on my tablet so most sites where I would have shopped, like eBay, won't even load. I also set a poshmark timer so I can't go on it for more than hour a day (to doom-shop-scroll as a friend of mine calls it). Poshmark is definitely the easiest to get lost in the sheer volume of stuff and things. It is easy to search really specifically by brand, color, style, even European size. eBay makes it very tempting to do the impulse-buy style bidding which seems lower stakes than flat-out buying something. By bidding it is easier to justify that if you 'win,' it was meant to be yours. Or maybe this is a me thing!

I am proud of myself for cutting back a lot on purse shopping (I was really fixated on building my handbag collection a few years ago) after realizing I wasn't using them all nearly enough to justify having so many. I am grappling a bit with the temptation to buy a new leather heart shaped bag since my red leather vintage one had a broken strap occur on my Hawaii trip, but I know what I should absolutely do instead is finally go to a Cobbler and get my strap fixed, get my red doc marten heel replaced (it needed it for at least 10 months), and get my vintage broken belt fixed as well. It would all be together certainly be cheaper than getting a new heart bag that I don't even need! Plus my Ted Baker silver heart bag is dressier but still perfectly great and functionable to use more often (I wear it very sparingly). 

I think it all just goes to show that thriftting can be as slippery as fast fashion shopping in that we tell ourselves it cheap and plentiful and then just consume just as much, sometimes more, than what we would be buying if we were hooked on shopping all the 'trends' and 'microtrends' at Zara, H&M, Forever21 and the like. Maybe the right thing to do for me would be to do a no-buy-fashion month, 30 days, or year but I don't think I'm ready to commit to that extreme of a challenge yet. I did go to Plato's Closet with my husband earlier this week and I got nothing. I don't want to force it. I went thrifting in Hawaii and got 2 dresses there, for six dollars each, and I've already worn both multiple times and they fit into my closet really nicely! 

It is and should be quality of quantity with clothes, and as I continue to curate and edit my closet and what I have, I realize that it's time to let go of the things that don't fit my body or life and hold on to and wear things out that I do love and that do make me happy. 

what would make the happiest though at the end of the day, happier than shoes, is to get some really substantial progress on my writing projects...so here's to more of that this year, please! 

Thanks for reading if you followed me on this tumultuous rant. xx