Why Post For Sale Baby Shoes Never Worn

I'm currently sitting on the floor of Leo’s closet. It’s Tuesday, somewhere around 11 AM, and I'm wearing a faded college t-shirt that smells vaguely of sour milk and desperation. I've an iced coffee next to me that was hot three hours ago. I’m supposed to be organizing the winter clothes, but instead, I’m staring at a cardboard box labeled "Leo 0-6M" and holding a pair of immaculate, tiny leather oxfords. The tag is literally still attached. I bought these for an absurd amount of money, and he didn't even wear them once.

I look at the pristine little soles and immediately think of Mr. Harrison’s 11th-grade English class. He wrote that famous six-word story on the chalkboard, the one everyone attributes to Ernest Hemingway. You know the one. For sale: baby shoes, never worn.

We all sat there in our incredibly uncomfortable wooden desks and sighed because it was just so tragic. The implication! The sorrow! The empty crib!

Oh god. What a load of crap.

I mean, yes, obviously infant loss is a real and devastating thing, but if you look at any local parent group or an e baby marketplace right now, you'll see hundreds of ads for pristine, untouched infant footwear. And 99 percent of the time, the backstory isn't a Hemingway novel. It’s just a deeply annoyed mother who's tired of looking at a pair of miniature boots her kid violently refused to put on their fat little feet.

The ridiculous math of seasonal sizing

Let me just tell you how you end up with a closet full of unworn baby shoes. You get these shoes at your baby shower. Let's say the shower is in May. Your baby is due in July. Your great-aunt Linda buys you a size 3 winter boot because she assumes your baby will be a size 3 in January. It’s a gorgeous boot. Fleece-lined. Little faux-leather buckles. You put it on a shelf in the nursery and admire it for months.

Then December rolls around. Your kid's foot has inexplicably ballooned to a size 5. The boots don't fit. You try to jam the foot in there anyway because Aunt Linda is coming over for Christmas, but the baby’s foot is shaped like a block of cheese and the boot won't budge. You give up. The boots go back in the box.

Or worse, you buy those tiny summer sandals for a family beach trip, but your baby decides to have a massive growth spurt on the exact Tuesday before you leave. I swear their feet grow overnight. It’s like, you blink and the canvas sneakers you bought for forty bucks are suddenly useless. So they sit in a bin in the garage until you panic-sell them for five dollars to a stranger named Brenda on the internet.

And don't even get me started on miniature baby high heels because I'll lose my actual mind.

My doctor sighed at me

There's also a medical reason why my kids never wore half the shoes we bought them. I didn't know this with Maya. I was a first-time mom and thought she needed to be fully accessorized at all times.

We were at her nine-month checkup, and I had stuffed her feet into these incredibly rigid little Mary Janes. Dr. Evans came into the room. He always looks like he needs a nap and a strong drink. He took one look at Maya's feet, kind of sighed heavily, and told me to take them off.

He basically explained that babies aren't supposed to wear hard shoes at all. He said they learn to walk by gripping the floor with their actual toes, like little monkeys, I guess? He muttered something about proprioception and how barefoot helps their balance and arch development, and that hard soles just mess up their natural stance. He told me they really only need shoes for warmth until they're confidently walking around outside on hot pavement or gravel.

So I took the stiff Mary Janes off, and Maya immediately grabbed one and tried to eat it. Typical.

The only ones that actually stayed on

Eventually, though, they do need something on their feet when you drag them out of the house. You can't just have a barefoot infant in the middle of a grocery store in November.

My absolute holy grail when Leo started pulling up on furniture were these Baby Sneakers Non-Slip Soft Sole First Shoes. I actually bought these myself after learning my lesson with the stiff shoes. We have wood floors in our house that are basically ice rinks, and he was slipping everywhere.

I got the brown ones. They look like real adult boat shoes, which is hilarious to me, but the bottom is entirely soft and squishy. Leo wore them to my sister's outdoor wedding in upstate New York. He was 10 months old, crawling through damp grass, pulling up on those folding wooden chairs, just generally being a menace. And the shoes stayed on. Mostly because the elastic laces actually work, but also because they didn't hurt him. He didn't spend the whole reception trying to aggressively rip them off his feet.

Anyway, the point is, if you're going to buy a baby shoe, make sure you can literally fold it in half with one hand.

Dressing a toddler is an extreme sport

Since we're on the topic of stuff we buy for our kids that causes us immense physical stress, I've to talk about sweaters. I had this whole vision of my kids looking like tiny catalog models.

I bought the Baby Sweater Organic Cotton Turtleneck for Leo. Look, the fabric is beautiful. It’s organic cotton, it's soft, the indigo blue color is stunning. But my kids have aggressively large heads. Like, 99th percentile noggins.

Getting a turtleneck over a screaming one-year-old’s giant head while they arch their back like an angry cat is an experience I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. I definitely sweat through my deodorant getting it on him. Once his head popped through the neck hole, he looked adorable and the stretch was seriously pretty forgiving, but my god, the journey to get there was rough.

If you're currently in the trenches of trying to figure out what really fits your weirdly proportioned infant without causing a meltdown, you might want to browse Kianao's organic baby clothing collection where they've stuff that doesn't require a wrestling degree to put on.

The barefoot floor life

But back to the feet. The barefoot thing is a real lifestyle for the first year. We spent so much time just sitting on the living room rug staring at the ceiling.

I really wish I’d had the Wooden Baby Gym when Maya was tiny. Instead, I had this glaring plastic neon monstrosity that someone gave me. It played this frantic, generic carnival tune that still haunts my nightmares. Every time she kicked it, it would scream this electronic noise at us.

This wooden one with the little leaves and the moon is just... quiet. You just lay them under it, bare little piggies kicking in the air, batting at the wooden beads while you sit on the couch and gulp down lukewarm coffee. No flashing lights. No synthetic music. Just a baby gripping their toes and looking at some nice wood. Bliss. My husband Dave used to actively hide the plastic one behind the sofa, but he probably would have left the wooden one out.

The secondhand flex

So the next time you're scrolling through Facebook Marketplace and you see an ad for brand-new baby shoes, don't think of Hemingway. Don't feel sad.

Think about some exhausted mom who finally gave up trying to cram a fuzzy boot onto a screaming infant's foot. Think about the fact that she’s probably selling them so she can buy a coffee and a moment of peace.

And honestly? Buying those unused shoes from her is a massive win. The baby shoe industry uses so many materials for something a kid wears for exactly three weeks. Grabbing them secondhand off some local group keeps them out of a landfill while saving yourself twenty bucks. It’s not a tragedy at all. It’s just smart parenting.

Ready to stop wasting money on stiff footwear your kid will violently reject? Check out Kianao's soft-sole footwear collection before you buy another useless pair of baby boots.

Questions I usually get asked while standing in line at Target

Do babies genuinely need shoes before they can walk?

No. Literally no. Unless it's freezing cold outside and you need to keep their little toes from turning blue, they don't need them. Socks are fine. Footie pajamas are fine. My doctor basically told me to burn all the hard shoes I bought until they were really walking on gravel or hot pavement.

What kind of shoes are best when they finally do start walking?

You want something that feels like a sock but has a little bit of grip on the bottom. If you can't bend the sole in half with two fingers, it's too stiff. I learned this the hard way after watching Maya walk like Frankenstein in those terrible Mary Janes. Soft, flexible soles are the only way to go so they can honestly feel the ground.

Is it okay to buy baby shoes used?

Oh my god, yes. Please do. Babies wear shoes for like, a minute and a half before their feet grow. I've bought so many pairs of shoes from consignment stores that literally still had the size sticker on the bottom. Just wipe them down. It saves you so much money and keeps all that leather and rubber out of the trash.

Why do baby shoes fall off so easily?

Because babies have no heels! Their feet are just little triangles of fat. There's nothing for the back of the shoe to grip onto. Plus, they spend 90 percent of their waking hours rubbing their feet together like little crickets. Look for something with elastic laces or an elastic ankle band, otherwise, you'll be backtracking through the grocery store looking for a missing left shoe.

What do I do with all the unused shoes I was gifted?

Sell them. Give them away. Toss them in a bin and forget about them for four years until you've to clean out the closet. Don't feel guilty about not using them. Your baby's foot development is more important than Aunt Linda's feelings about a pair of fleece boots.