I hoard shoes. I don’t buy that many that often — okay, I do, who am I kidding? I usually return from Hong Kong with at least one or two pairs, but at least I make sure they’re very good ones. I have my McQueens and Margielas lovingly boxed up and tucked away in the inconspicuous shoe cabinet hidden behind the main door. Today we bought four pairs of previously-expensive shoes at a very awesome sale, but I can guarantee and promise and confirm that I need every single pair.
Yes, I am a woman and I reason like one.
One of my friends steps into a pair of heels and walks around the house each time she needs to feel better. I suppose my mother would go crazy if I wore my shoes all around the house, so I rarely do that. Actually, I’d go crazy too if someone did that in my house — my friends in the US were polite enough to remove their shoes each time they stepped into my room. Well, the point is, the right shoes make us feel sexy and powerful, which is perhaps why our synapses go a little out of their way to help us rationalise our shoe purchases to the, well, truly rational around us.
As a result of my quest for power in five inches, though,we’re running out of space in the shoe cabinet. Apparently, keeping your shoes anywhere apart from around the entrance of the house is pretty bad for fengshui (but don’t take my word for it), and geomancy aside, I don’t have the screamworthy walk-in shoe cabinet / beer cellar in that Heineken ad.
All this means that I’ve been forced to find a new home for a number of shoes and their respective boxes. I wasn’t to ready to give them all up for a measly $2 to the karang guni man who comes by every weekend because he rejects our newspapers and insists we sell him our old television sets and computers all the time — sure, it’s as if we really buy new electronic equipment all the time.
In the end we donated them to the Association for Persons with Special Needs (APSN), which runs a thrift shop that takes in old shoes and bags, fix and clean them up, and put them up for sale again. The money goes back to the Association, which works with adults and children with mild intellectual disabilities. So my shoes will soon find nice new owners and the money will go to a more meaningful cause.
Donating Your Old Shoes
I got the following information off the APSN Website:
Contact Nelson Kang at (65) 6346 2425 or kangkp [at] apsn.org.sg
THE F-WORD 