I continue to receive questions along the lines of, “with so many boots in your cowboy boots, motorcycle boots, Frye boots, work boots and dress boots collections, do you really wear them all?

I can understand why I get those kinds of questions. The answer is…

…yes, most of them anyway.

I feel that having made such an investment in my boot collections that I should wear them, not just have them collecting dust in my boot closet, bedroom closet, or other areas of the house.

Contrary to what some may think, my spouse and I do not have a 10,000 square-foot mansion dedicated to a collection of boots and leather. We live in a modest suburban home that is roomy enough to provide a comfortable lifestyle and space for us to work, relax, and enjoy, but not room after room of boot after boot :-). In fact, my spouse is a firm believer in “volume in = volume out” so we do not collect clutter. (Though, I admit, I can probably do away with my undergraduate college textbooks that are 40 years out of date.)

I admit that I tend to favor wearing newer boots in my collection that fit better and whose insoles have not hardened to feeling like concrete.

I also cannot wear my good ‘ol Frye boots any more. When I bought them and wore them all day every day in high school and college, my feet were more limber and could withstand the pounding pain of the footbeds. In my youthful Frye-booted days, I did not notice any foot pain even after hiking miles daily across campus while wearing them rushing from class to class and student activity to student activity.

I have grown to have less favor of my tall Wesco boots that are just darned heavy and hard to walk in. Fine for a booted display while on a long motorcycle ride, but not much else. Especially since I have long outgrown going to gay male leather events where Wesco boots made a certain statement. I’m just an old married fart… why would I want to go to such events any more?

Throughout this blog when talking about someone interested in buying new boots, I have long recommended having your feet re-measured with a Brannock device (shown here) because as difficult as it is to admit, as a guy ages, the arches in his feet fall causing the feet to spread and require larger-sized and perhaps wider boots than he wore when he was in his teens and 20s.

And that is what has happened to me, naturally with age. I remember at one point in my college Freshman years, I saw some cool boots in a store that only were available in size 9D. I tried them on. Being a typical guy, I was not going to admit that they felt a bit tight. I mistakenly thought, “they’ll stretch.” I bought them with my hard-earned $2.10/hour summer job earnings and wore them. And wore them. And wore them. I wore them enough such that my feet were screaming, yet I was not going to admit that those boots did not fit and never fit from the get-go. And it got worse when I gained the “college 20” pounds.

In my 20s and 30s, I was comfortable in size 9-1/2D boots. I acquired about one-fourth of my current boot collection then, including my Fryes, cowboy boots, and early motorcycle boots such as my then-fave Sears Engineers, or as my sister called them, “your tough-guy boots.”

In my 40s, I had my feet re-measured and realized that I was a 10D in one foot and the other foot was a tad smaller. Some guy in a boot store told me that having feet of two different sizes was not that unusual, and to get boots the same size at the larger foot’s size. He strongly advised not to buy one boot of one size and another of another size. Back then, some stores would actually sell you boots of different sizes. (Not any more.)

As my boot collection continued to grow, I would favor the 10D boots over the 9-1/2D boots in my collection because the larger size made the boots feel more comfortable. I began the routine that I continue today of wearing several pairs of boots every day. Or what I say, “the right boot for the right application.”

Just as I will wear dressy boots with dress clothes when I have a “big-honcho” professional meeting, I will change to wear motorcycle boots when I hop on my Harley the same day. I may switch to work boots when I get home that day and cut the lawn. I may switch again to cowboy boots with jeans (leather or denim) and attend a community meeting.

For about the past 30 years, it has been quite common that I will wear three to five pairs of boots every.single.day. Boots for work at the office, boots for riding the Harley, boots for knockin’ out chores around the house, and boots for general, casual occasions. That is one great thing about a large boot collection — I always have something different from which to choose.

I said earlier that I tend to favor my newer boots. However, every month usually on the first-of-the-month, I select about 20 pairs of boots from my bedroom closet and bring them to my basement boot room. I will clean, treat, condition, and polish (as appropriate) those boots, then store them. I will choose the same number of pairs of boots to bring up to my bedroom closet for the next month’s wear — usually these are boots that I wear to work because I have limited time in the morning while dressing for work, and I don’t want to be running down to the basement to pick a pair of boots for the day.

Not surprisingly, my boots are in good shape for three major reasons:

1) Religiously, when I take a pair of boots off, I wipe them down with a leather wipe to remove accumulated dirt and grime. It always amazes me what gunk accumulates on boots during wear. (And is a major reason why I do not condone bootlicking. Yuck!)

2) I maintain my boots when I do my monthly boot rotation described above — clean, treat, condition, and polish about 20 pairs in the monthly rotation and another 20 or so pairs at random that are already in my boot closet. When a boot seems to be dusty, it’s time for a cleaning and then choosing to wear again.

3) With as many boots as I have, obviously I am not wearing the same boots every day or for that matter, every week. With reduced wear, boots last longer.

Summarizing — yes, I do wear the boots in my collection that still fit. And I enjoy them.

Life is short: reboot yourself and enjoy!