This week’s Gallery request is shoes. I had lots of ideas: the Girls’ First Shoes, which sit, framed, in their bedrooms; my well-worn sneakers, a result of training for Shine 2011 (incidentally, if you haven’t please consider sponsoring me. The link is to your right); my favourite shoes, the ones I got married in; the first pair of shoes DH bought for me on our first romantic mini-break; the welly rack that sits by the back door. There is never a shortage of shoes in a house full of girls. In fact that’s the reason for my image, (taken with my toosmartforme phone as DA has hidden our camera somewhere, so apologies if it’s not up to my usual high quality [insert snort of disbelief here]).
There are always shoes hanging about the place, no matter how well I try to tidy them away. As a family we are in the habit of taking our shoes off when we get home, though this is more down to our prefernce for slippers in the winter and bare feet in the summer than for any other reason. When you have little girls who have several pairs if shoes each, all of which should be immediately accessible in case of a last-minute change of mind (or Toddler Tantrum, as I prefer to call them) then you need somewhere to store them. Enter what-I-call The Shoe Box, a large basket bought for a bargain £1 at a local charity shop which fits perfectly under the hall bench.
Up until now I have been doing all the putting-away-the-shoes, but I’m tired of the tedium. I am teaching LBG, with the help of Reward Chart Version 2.0 to put her shoes in the basket as soon as she takes them off. When it gets colder she can get out her slippers at the same time. Whilst I have trained DA to bring my slippers when I ask for them, the rest of the training does not seem to be going as well: she prefers to randomly pluck two choes from the conveniently located recepticle and walk around the house wearing them until she a) gets bored b) covers them in food c) soaks them with wee or d) all of the above. It’s a work in progress.
For cleaner shoes, please see other posts in The Gallery.
We have a couple of baskets, one for our shoes and the other for our slippers. My kids are a little older so are used to changing from shoes to slippers. We all tend to do this all year round as it’s never terribly warm here.
Shoe boxes aren’t as neat as putting the shoes away where they can’t be seen, Ruth, but at least it’s a step in that general direction!
I like this post, very true and with humour in it too.
I am constantly frustrated about sheos and storage. Keep smiling
I so need a basket like that and to train my children up too! A ‘real’ shot of shoes! X