I am not fond of shopping for shoes or clothes. When it comes to shoes, I’m not especially interested in how they look, or at least much less than I am with clothes, but I am very particular about how they fit and feel. (Which is why I stopped buying and wearing normal summer sandals years ago, and now wear hiking/walking sandals the entire summer.) The vast majority of shoes I try on are just plain uncomfortable.

The bothersome thing about buying shoes (or other things that I want to be “just so”) is that fashion never stands still. I find a great make and model, and then they wear out, and there is no way to buy the same thing again, because it’s out of fashion and the producer now has totally new and different designs.

So imagine my happiness when I discovered that Teva still makes the exact same sandals that I bought in 2013. That old pair is really, really worn, and is about to start falling in pieces because the outer sole is nearly worn through in places. I have been putting off buying a new pair because of the hassle of finding something that fits. And now it turns out I don’t need to!

I had forgotten that the sandals once had a layer of nice, comfy microfibre on top. That fiber-y softness has all been worn away a long time ago. And I had forgotten that the soles used to have a bit of bounce to them – the arches of the old ones are much flatter and the soles noticeably thinner than on the new ones. They old sandals are actually about half a centimetre longer than the new ones, because of the way the arch has flattened out. But even as worn out as the were, they felt great. The new pair feels even better.

They feel so good and I am so pleased that I didn’t have to do any shoe shopping, that I actually bought a third pair as well. I will now put them away in the basement, and when this current pair wears out, I can get a new pair of sandals with no shopping. What a luxury!