Tackle-It Tuesday: Kid Shoes

Every Tuesday, I tackle a different project around my home that's been bugging all of us!

I have a very nice problem: too many kid shoes. We receive shoes from all over the place. We have shoes for Sam that his brothers gently wore. We have shoes from older boys for our older boys. We have shoes from older girls for our girls. Sometimes we find we don't have a particular size and have to go buy a cheap pair. I can't remember what happened in Wyoming but I do remember having to stop at Target in Salt Lake City to buy new shoes for Eva. We accumulate shoes around here. Not me, but the kids. Definitely not me. I wish!

So the only thing I've been putting off longer than SPACKLING (yes, I will get around to it ... probably when the weather is colder. Then you will be sick of spackling and sanding and painting pictures, mark my words.

Had to mini this picture because I realized too late that my son was trying on shoes in the background, half buck naked (he's potty training successfully and runs around half naked). This is a picture of most of our shoes. I've been keeping a bunch in the basement because I was too lazy to go through them. With garage sale time coming up, though, I HAD to go through them to prepare to sell/give away what we don't/won't use.

This is the rest of our shoes, which we keep in a basket in the family room off the garage so they are on the ready when it's time to leave the house in a rush, which we do regularly. With 5 kids, 2 of which are getting bigger and bigger feet, this system isn't going to work a whole lot longer. That's a rock on the floor, not a turd.

Sidenote to my mother: After all the heartache of trying to get those danged Stompeez slippers for the kids for months on end, I saw them at the freaking CVS for $19.99 (yep, 8 bucks cheaper than what you paid PER KID to get them within like 5 months!). Folks: lesson to you = don't buy it off the TV. Wait for it to show up in the stores.

After doing all the matching (while a 2-year-old tried them all on not matching to throw me off the trail), I came up with ONE big tub for the boys. It is still a lot of shoes, but I'm not ready to part with some of the hiking boots and nice shoes even though we rarely hike and rarely go nice places. Once every single son I have grows out of a pair, I will then give them away.

CRAP. Then I found these in the bottom of the older boys' closet and had to incorporate them in.

This is what I ended up with for the girls ... one overstuffed copy paper sized box. This includes tap shoes and bigger shoes. Yes, that is finger painting on the girls' wall. Their dad let them do it cuz he's cool.

Here ya go. The boys' shoes fit nicely into the tub in the bottom of their closet.

Question: Do you have any interest in a Tackle-It Tuesday Linky?