Bin there, done that

So there I was, stomping around the house doing my usual mini-tantrum that my wife has grown to love so much.
Whenever things start to bug me at the house, I do this without even realizing it. Most of the time, the things that bug me are so insignificant that I know I will not get anyone agreeing with me that it is an issue of comparable importance to curing diseases. The main example of this: shoes.
To me, shoes belong in the closet. Paired neatly together. Perhaps even on a little shoe shelf. And the laces should be removed and braided together and then twisted into a dreamcatcher that will hang in the closet. OK, maybe not that far.
But I think it is completely reasonable to suggest that the shoes go in the closet so that every morning I do not have to go on a hunt for three different pairs of shoes (mine, of course, were easy to retrieve since they were right there in the closet). And I also would not have to justify my accidentally bringing my son to school wearing two different kinds of shoes by saying, “Well, he wanted to wear a left Thomas the Tank shoe and a right Buzz Lightyear shoe. He has a matching pair at home.”
So every so often I start on my little shoe crusade. A shoesade, if you will. I usually start with Allie. “Allie, if you just put your shoes in your closet each night, you’ll know where to find them,” I explain. “But, Daddy,” she says, “you always find my shoes in the morning.”
“Yeah, but,” I explain, “I don’t WANT to find your shoes in the morning. I want to drink coffee and read the paper and watch the Today show and wonder if all those millions of dollars make Katie Couric’s career splat worth it.”
“Katie who?” she says.
It’s a lost cause.
I know my wife and I won’t sway each other’s opinions on this matter, as we are on fundamentally different ends of the shoe spectrum. I never go around barefoot. It’s not some sort of neurotic issue or anything. I just prefer keeping my shoes on. (I actually shower wearing hiking boots.) My wife, meanwhile, thinks the upstairs is no place for shoes. “I can’t STAND wearing shoes upstairs,” she tells me.
But we agreed to compromise a while back in an effort to reduce my mini-tantrums. At the door where we usually enter the house, there would be a basket. The shoe bin. That’s where the shoes would live when they entered and peeled off their shoes so they could go upstairs.
The idea sounded like it might have merit. At the very least, each morning I would not have to go sprinting from room to room. Rather, I could focus my shoe hunt in the bin o’ shoes. I am sorry to report that the shoe basket, while established with the best of intentions, now ranks right behind the stomach flu on my list of things I most enjoy. I often say awful, intentionally hurtful things to the shoe bin.
The shoe bin has turned into this shoe burial ground, where dozens of shoes — many of which I have never seen — end up in a final resting place. I have yet to retrieve a shoe from there that my kids could actually wear to school. I know you are probably asking why I don’t just throw out the shoes. The reason? Because I have an idea whose shoes they are. They could be dress-up play shoes. They could have been from a friend who left them over. They could be shoes that the kids will grow into. I simply do not know.
And where, meanwhile, are the kids’ shoes they need for school? Let’s see — under the couch, on the ceiling fan, behind the TV. Pretty much anywhere that is not a closet. My wife, meanwhile, offers such helpful suggestions as, “Did you check the shoe bin?”
So the fact is the addition of the shoe bin not only did not correct the problem but made it worse, as the original problem still existed, but now we had a clearinghouse for mystery shoes. My wife suggested we get a shoe bin for the shoe bin. I think she was just doing this to be mean.
Perhaps I simply need to come to grips with the fact that the shoe war will never be won by me. When it comes to being obsessive about putting shoes in the same place, I lose 3-1 every time. More power to them, I guess, for not stressing over something as insignificant as where your shoes sit. Perhaps I should just take a deep breath and cast aside my worries about where I put my shoes. I mean, do I REALLY have to have my shoes in the same place all the time?
Yes. Yes, I do. And don’t move my shower boots.