When the orthopedic surgeon told me to wear different shoes to heal my foot injury, I was relieved that I didn’t need to have surgery, get casted or wear an immobilizer boot.
I wasn’t thrilled to have to spend hundreds of dollars on expensive running shoes. Nor was I thrilled that I could no longer wear my 3 pairs of Altra workout shoes and 5 pairs of Merrill hiking shoes that I already owned.
But, my foot was f***ed and painful. My priority was to rehabilitate the injury and prevent it from recurring, if at all possible.
So I bought 4 new pairs of high end (expensive) running sneakers and have been wearing them for all of my activities ever since.
As for the Merrills, I threw out the two pairs that were more than 3 years old and whose soles were worn down. I kept the three pairs that are Goretex and relatively new to use when mowing the lawn, during snowstorms or rainstorms. I am hoping that once I am 100% healed, I can occasionally wear these without issues.
I put the Altra workout shoes in my spare closet. I was thinking that eventually I could wear them once my injury had healed. The idea that I’d get rid of them seemed un-frugal, wasteful and simply unacceptable.
Four weeks later, I threw out the Altras.
I spent way too much time during 4 weeks thinking about the Altra shoes and not wanting to discard them.
It’s clear to me that my doctor was correct. The new shoes feel better, are helping with my recovery and have resulted in much less plantar fasciitis and achilles pain.
And as much as I hate “wasting money”, I despise owning stuff that I don’t use or love.
I loved the Altra shoes. They were soft, lightweight and minimalistic. But they no longer serve their purpose.
Right before I tossed them, I searched my email to see when I purchased them. They are over 2 years old. I saw I actually bought all 3 pairs on sale for $65/each because they had been discontinued. I then looked at their soles and saw they were fairly worn down.
This, combined with my injury, made it easy to toss them out.
There’s no point in keeping them in my closet “just in case”. In case what? In case I want to risk reinjuring my foot? In case I want to test old shoes to see if I get plantar fasciitis or achilles tendon tenderness again?
No thanks.
This seems so obvious today that I should have tossed them out within the first few days of wearing my new sneakers.
I would have saved myself 4 weeks of internal debates inside my head.
Sometimes, I have to go through that process. Even it was literally a $195 decision.
Ugh.