I will blatantly admit that I am a packrat. I save everything under the pretense that I will come up with some creative idea to deal with all the junk later. “It might come in handy one day” I’d think. One of the things that pile up in my closet is shoes. I worked at Nike for two years and it went something like this: “ooo, these are cute, and it wouldn’t even be that much if I use my employee discount!” I didn’t really need the shoes, that was a non issue, but it was the principle of having Nikes in my closet that counted.

I used to be a runner, so I justified this excessive spending by reasoning that I needed the shoes to take on the track. The truth is that I’ve only worn some of them once so that I don’t feel guilty about purchasing the shoe. “It’s no good sitting in a box at home…A sneaker doesn’t actually have a story to tell if it has never been worn. It won’t have a soul until you do.”

For this week’s compact challenge, I thought back to Nike because I recall the donation box that used to sit by the cash register at Nike. The point of this donation box was to collect old worn out shoes and melt the all rubber to make basketball courts for kids in “third world” countries. This would provide them with a place to play and spend their childhood. The Nike that I worked at was pretty successful at this project. The challenge for me this week has been to go through my huge pile of shoes and decide which ones were extremely worn out so that I can pack them in a bag and drop them off at the donation box when I go home for the summer. After rummaging through my pile of shoes, I was able to come up with some running shoes that were pretty much done for due to track.

I then thought about those shoes that I have only worn once. I decided to be extremely honest with myself about the shoes that I don’t wear anymore. I did some research on the internet and I came across this great project called soles4souls. The project is about collecting new to mildly used shoes and then donating them to those in need. The project has helped support such disasters as the 2004 tsunami in Southeast Asia and Hurricane Katrina. I might take part in this project once I’ve decided on which shoes I won’t honestly wear anymore.

With that being said, I’m glad I don’t work at Nike anymore because I don't have to deal with customers. Bloody savages.

http://www.soles4souls.org/
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