Confessions of a Shoeaholic

I thought I’d confess some of my shoe-buying sins in a “confessions of a shoeaholic” post for your Sunday entertainment. Regular readers of the blog may have noticed I have a bit of a thing about shoes. The image above isn’t, however, a photo montage of all my shoes.

It’s some of my shoes. Hello, my name’s Catherine and I’m a shoeaholic.

Embarrassingly, these are just some of the shoes I have in my wardrobe, the spare room’s wardrobe, in (seasonal) storage, on the bedroom floor, on top of bookcases, by the front door, by the back door, on shelves, on more shelves, under the bed… I was wondering how many I have because in the last two weeks I’ve bought another three pairs. I don’t know how it happened, they just somehow appeared [cough] in my online basket and now they’ve turned up on the doorstep. I get so many deliveries at home I know the Hermes delivery lady by her first name and she notices when I change my nail polish.

I have an unfortunate habit of going online when there’s a sale on, or when I’ve seen a discount code, or when there’s a new trend in shoes and I convince myself that I need purple brogues because, well – I don’t have any brogues in purple. I have white ones, black ones, black and white ones, coral ones, blue ones, cream ones, pink ones, white and silver ones, orange and beige ones. And red ones. But no purple, so therefore I need some, right?

In my latest spree I bought one pair of bronze Mary Jane-style heels, one pair of flat grey mules and one pair of white lace block heels with a pointed toe – I have them in pink and they’re so nice in pink; it makes sense to get a pair I love so much in another colourway. (Not the first time.)

I’ve dreamt of having amazing shelving to display all my shoes, but our house is just too small to build it anywhere. I also sometimes wonder how much they’re all worth; I certainly don’t buy Louboutins or any other designer shoes, but I rarely buy very cheap shoes. Basically I love shoes and have a very understanding and easygoing husband – a lethal combination for a shoeaholic.

64 pairs of shoes from my shoe collection [read: addiction].

Stare too long and you’ll make yourself sick

Luckily though – and quite surprisingly – I’m pretty good with my money. I learnt the hard way that racking up huge debts to feed an addiction to shopping isn’t very clever, or very wise: I spent most of my 20s in debt and it took me till well into my 30s to pay it all off.

I now pay credit card bills off in full each month and somehow know instinctively without checking my bank balance if I have to be a little more frugal at any give time. Knowing when you’ve reached a monthly spend limit you’ve set yourself would be helpful for shopaholics – a tool like Barclaycard’s text alerts giving you bespoke notifications would come in handy (something I could have done with all those years ago).

I’m hoping there’s an alert that tells me “You have reached this month’s shoe buying limit. Just one new pair of shoes this month, Mrs. Summers, not four”.

Are you good with your money, a shopaholic/shoeaholic, or a mixture of the two (like me)? Do tell me I’m not the only one out there…

P.S. Like this post? You might also enjoy How the High Street Could Serve the Mature Woman Better.

Linking up to: Let It Shine, Brilliant Blog Posts, Friday’s Fab Favourites, Sunday Funday

Disclosure: Thank you to Barclaycard for partnering with me on this post (click here for my full disclosure). All content is original, however, and opinions are my own and 100% honest.