Stop Tripping Over Your Own Shoes

How to make systems work for you and what to do when they don’t

Photo by Jakob Owens on Unsplash

My coat closet is fifteen feet away from my front door.

In theory, fifteen feet seems like a perfectly reasonable distance. The average American walks that far almost 900 times in a single day, so surely I can spare one of those trips to put my shoes away when I get home. Surely I won’t kick them off the moment I walk in the door and leave them strewn in the only available walkway. Surely—surely—in my mad dash to the bathroom, to let the dog out, or to my long-awaited afternoon snack, I won’t leave my shoes behind.

Imagine my surprise when I tripped over my shoes each and every morning.

And shoes were not the only culprit. Jackets and winter coats were flung over the arm of the couch. Purses and tote bags sat tipped across the tile. Leashes, and car keys, and a rotating cast of knit caps. My front door was a dumping ground for the outside world, the layers melting off of me the instant I felt the warmth of my home.

Meanwhile, my coat closet still sat a measly fifteen feet away. It was home to matching hangers, sturdy shoe shelves, and the prettiest seasonal bins Micheals had to offer. It had labels, it had hooks, and it was begging to organize my life, but I simply could not make the perilous trek.

Every morning, I would wake up to a mess I didn’t have time to clean. Every night, I would vow to pick it up the next day. On and on the cycle went, building up a mountain of discarded gear that seemed impossible to climb.

I didn’t take issue with the mess itself, so much as I took issue with the avoidability of it all. The lack of simplicity. My closet was so close. I had a beautiful system at the ready. How did this happen every day—how was I so bad at this one part of my life? This tiny, everyday failure started all of my mornings. The consistent frustration was how I ended each night.

It took one particularly tricky morning involving a rogue lunchbox and a twisted ankle for me to realize an important fact: It didn’t matter how good my system was if it wasn’t easy to use.