Loading ...For those who know me, would you really ever have expected me to be writing a blog post about shoes? For those that don’t know me the pertinent information is that I am and always have been fashion challenged, well to be fair it isn’t so much that I am challenged as that I just don’t care! The truly important thing though is that I HATE shoe shopping.
On our trip to England I was trying to pack light and left my hiking boots at home, but the first day we tried going for a walk I ended up with a huge blister. My sister kindly lent me her Salomon walking shoes for the rest of our holiday. They were the most comfortable things I had ever walked in. She said this was because she had done all the hard work of breaking them in walking up Snowden and Ben Nevis. I tried to convince her to part with them, but she wasn’t selling.
So picture Christmas morning when I open the package from my sister to discover … those shoes! Thrilled doesn’t even cover it. Apparently being that excited about being given a pair of new-to-me shoes makes me special! But I don’t care. Now I just need to wait for there not to be a foot of snow on the ground so I can take them for a walk!
They weren’t the only pair of shoes that came my way over Christmas; we have some very good friends who invited us to join them for their family’s Christmas Eve celebrations and I found myself coming home with a rather lovely and unexpected treat of a new-to-me pair of boots, as my friend was trying to reduce her ‘shoe population’.
There was a time that I would have felt uncomfortable with talking about receiving these shoes. Society, or at least the society I grew up in, attaches a stigma to second-hand goods. We are taught that it is all about earning as much money as possible and having as many things as possible. That our success is dictated by our bank balance.
We used to live by those values, and let me tell you, getting used to not having that financial freedom, to just go into the bookstore or go out for pizza, took a lot of getting used to, and still does. Admitting that we don’t have the money to go out partying, or to buy new shoes still elicits those feelings of failing somehow.
A friend commented on the 2009 review post “if ‘easing suffering’ was a currency, you would be millionaires” and that really helped me to focus on the fact that we are truly wealthy in the things that matter most.
I do almost ALL my shoe and clothing shopping (and that for my son) on eBay and at local resale and thrift stores. Buying second-hand and saving a TON of money are GREAT!
Comment by Michelle — January 6, 2010 @ 4:24 pm
I think trading and sharing things that you don’t need or don’t use is great – the winter boots I’m wearing were a gift from one of my friends (she ordered them online and they didn’t fit properly). We frequently trade things we have that we were given or bought but don’t need or use anymore. It’s the socially responsible thing to do!
Boo society – what does it know anyway?
Comment by Emily — January 6, 2010 @ 9:30 pm