Today we helped my cousin clean out her mother’s home (see Aunt Susi if you’re not sure why we were there). They had been there previously in the past week or two and then we took out the rest of the junk that was left today. One thing that there was just SO MUCH of, was shoes.

I’m not sure if Susi just never threw away a pair of shoes in her life, or if she knew that one day we would find her collection of shoes and have a good time trying them on, but her collection was massive. There were shoes, I’m sure that were circa 1995. There were some shoes that I, personally, have had previously and had to recycle through because they were either to uncomfortable or just to high of a heel for me to wear with a bum leg/knee. There were tennis shoes… flats… heels… boots… just all kinds of shoes.

My cousins carried the shoes outside and my Aunt Debbie decided we should keep them and see what we could salvage. Some of them were still in boxes and many of them didn’t appear to have been worn at all.

After the unloading of the apartment, we went to my cousin Heather’s house while the fellas finished up the deck they had been working on for a few weeks. One of the tubs of shoes happened to have made it to Heather’s so we got it out and found (to my surprise) that the majority of us wore the same size of shoe – the same size as Aunt Susi – 8 or 8.5. We got them out and there were some of those shoes that you just love and wore so much that really nobody else is going to want, there were some with 5″ heels, some flats, some from, I swear, 1974 and there were some that she had definitely not worn.

I think Susi would have had a good time watching us try on her shoes. She actually probably was watching me strut around in her 5″ heels (I didn’t even fall down). We tried on so many pairs either because they were cute, crazy and occasionally we even found some practical ones.

Once we had made it through all of those shoes, my cousin Hilary drove home and got the REST of the shoes. I’m talking 2 more large totes full of shoes, 5 new-in-boxes shoes and another bag of shoes. We went through all of those (while the fellas were sawing so they’re a bit sandy now). We all picked out ones we thought we would wear, we put a bunch of them in totes to donate and then threw out a bag of them. We also separated the new or almost new shoes and will probably try to put them up for sale if anyone ends up heading up that operation.

Personally, I came home with a pair of tan kitten heel shoes with a pointy black toe and a pair of BRAND NEW COACH silver shoes. We’re talking, new, in box, with the stuffing still in the toes. I didn’t get anything I can’t actually walk in without hurting myself (though it was very tempting!). Now I just need somewhere to wear them.

If you need some new women’s size 8/8.5 shoes for, well, whatever (tennis shoes, flats, 2″ heels, 5″ heels, Speery’s, Guess, Aldo, etc) there will soon be a nice collection over at the Goodwill in Sunbury off of Route 3.