Can your capsule wardobe survive the wear? My sandals haven't

Yesterday I completed my 8th week doing the clothes of my back challenge and I've begun to realise something a bit scarey. When you wear your clothes a lot - they wear out really fast!

I appreciate the rest of you probably knew that - but for me this is genuinely a bit of a shock. I was prepared for my clumsyness to rob me of an item (hello grey t-shirt, don't worry I have plans for you....), but I thought everything else would just tick along for the whole year. But already I can feel my tshirts getting thinner with each wash.

And worse my sandals are beginning to give up the ghost. 

On the third or fourth day of the challenge I went to the pub with some fellow dog owners and a couple of them expressed real concerns about my sandals. They all know how much time I spend walking and didn't think they'd last the course. I naturally poo pooed them explaining that the rules allowed me to wear my walking sandals when I was walking the dog (as long as it wasn't a social walk that'd end up with a coffee or a meal somewhere), so the sandals wouldn't really see that much punishment.

How wrong can one person be. What I think I'd forgotten about myself is three things:

• I walk a lot. Everywhere, all the time. Even not counting walking the dog I probably do 6-8000 steps a day
• I like to get my toes out. So if it's not raining I will be wearing sandals. So far I've worn them 37 out of 56 days. That is 66% of the time. I start wearing sandals in March and rarely put them away until October. If I continue to wear them at this rate for that long we are talking 146 days of wear.
• I'm not 23 anymore.

Not being 23 anymore might feel a bit irrelevant here - but it isn't. I truly wish that sometime in my late teens or early 20's someone had taken me aside and told me, really convinced me that continually slamming my heels against the pavement in paper thin soled shoes would come back to haunt me. I wore ballet shoes (note not ballet flats - actually wear to dance class when you are 6 ballet shoes) to tramp around Sheffield for years.

I can't do that anymore. The padding on my heel has worn down after years of abuse and feeling the pavement through my shoes hurts now. It sends shocks of pain up my legs, it's more than a little bit grim. And about two weeks ago this began to happen with my sandals. 

I panicked a bit about this - I don't really have room for another pair of shoes in the capsule ( I currently have 4 and have allowed for 5 with some winter boots), unless I'm prepared to sacrifice a winter jumper or a second pair of jeans. But equally there is another 109 days when I'm going to want to be wearing sandals to get through that I can't spend in pain.

So my first thought was to try and fix them. The lovely chaps at the cobblers put on new soles for me. This gave me an additional couple of millimeters between me and the pavement. What they couldn't do anything about was the wear on the cork, which has basically compressed as a result of an 11 stone woman taking 260,000 steps in them and so has lost it's shock absorbing qualities.

Insoles in sandals are a tricky issue, I always think a visible insole in a sandal is slightly revolting. Just a receptacle for sweat and odour  - a sanitary towel for the foot. This is not an option for me. But after a bit of a search around I found some gel pads in M&S. I took some photos of them here - they are not pretty! They are also super tricky to get into sandals that have anything that goes over the top of your foot.

Still eventually I got them in, they are invisible once the sandals are on and they are a tiny bit more comfortable. But if I'm honest will they see me through another 109 days of wear? Doubtful. And the attempt to get them fixed wasn't cheap either £25 for the new soles and £5 for the gel pads. I'm really aware that these repair attempts wouldn't be an option for some of the parents Contact a Family support, who are struggling to make ends meet due to the extra costs of raising a child with additional needs. And being comfortable in your shoes isn't a luxury.

Anyway, I think you can expect to see a new pair of sandals being added to this mix over the next week or so. Which means there is something else I won't be able to have come winter - so let's just hope it's a mild one!

Why am I putting myself through this you may ask? Because 65% of families with disabled children Contact A Family spoke to said they went without essentials like clothes in order to cover the additional costs of meeting their child's needs.

This is not ok and I'm raising money for Contact A Family and awareness of the challenges families face through the #clothesoffmyback extreme capsule challenge. You can help by donating to Contact A Family's work supporting these families here and by sharing my posts through your social networks.

 Finally for all you rules checkers out there here is what I wore on days 55 and 56