Why wait for Spring? Early February falls midway between the Winter Solstice and the Spring Equinox, and it's a traditional time for house cleaning.
I've been doing my best to live up to tradition. Room by room, I've been going through each area of our home and getting rid of anything we no longer love, need or use.
With two growing kids in the household, one item that keeps cropping up is...shoes!
My son seems to have finally reached his full foot size, but for a couple years there I swear we were getting to be personal friends with the shoe store guys. And now my daughter's approaching the age of maximum foot expansion.
So now we are the proud owners of an impressive collection of shoes and boots of various styles and sizes. We'll never use most of them again. What to do? Are they doomed to take up landfill space forever?
Not necessarily. By chance, I stumbled upon a link to a couple really cool programs that address the issue:
- Soles4Souls is a non-profit dedicated to putting shoes on the feet of needy people around the world. You can drop off your gently-worn footwear at a participating retail drop-off points, or mail them to one of their three U.S. warehouses. You can also donate new shoes or make cash donations. Visit www.soles4souls.org for more information and donating instructions.
- Got worn-out sneakers? Don't toss them in the trash! Instead, send them to Nike's Reuse-a-Shoe program, where they will be ground up into new material and used to make new sports surfaces like soccer and football fields, basketball and tennis courts, tracks and playground surfacing. (One would hope they're deodorized in the process!) Visit www.nikereuseashoe.com to find out where to send your used-up athletic shoes (any brand), or to find a convenient drop-off location near you - and to check out the impressive number of shoes donated to date!
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