As junior Abby Berner walks up her driveway after school, she sees a shoebox she’s been expecting sitting in front of her house.  This isn’t the first pair that’s arrived at her  doorstep in the last year, and it certainly won’t be the last.

According to Berner, she began to collect shoes about a year ago, and her collection has grown rapidly since then. She now has 116 pairs of shoes to date.

“I just keep buying more shoes,” Berner said. “I love seeing all of the different kinds, [and] I look for [a unique shoe] that not a lot of people have.”

However other students, like junior Greg Haynes, have been collecting shoes for a lot longer than that. His parents began buying and collecting shoes for Haynes in 2004 until Haynes began buying his shoes himself. Today Haynes has around 30 to 40 pairs he can wear since he began collecting them.

  “I think [shoes are] something that’s important to me,” Haynes said. “It’s cool to have a lot of different pairs of shoes I can wear any day anytime.”

When students begin to collect shoes their methods of storing them can differ greatly. Sophomore Jackson King likes to keep his shoes on a shelf and meticulously organizes them.

“I usually get a new pair of shoes every month or two,” King said. “I have a shoe rack, and put them on there from darkest color to lightest color.”

Recently, Berner has built floor-to-ceiling shelves for her shoe collection and plans to expand those shelves in the future.

“[The shelves are in] my bedroom, but it’s like my whole wall,” Berner said. “I saw a bunch of pictures online of shelves on walls, and I thought ‘why don’t I just make my whole wall like that’ and then I might switch my room and make it a whole bedroom of shoes.”

While Haynes does not have a wall of shoes, and does not organize them by color, one thing he does enjoy about collecting shoes is the frequency at which new styles of shoes are released.

“[I like] seeing all the new [shoes] that come out,” Haynes said. “You buy a new pair and then two months later a newer model comes out and it’s just cool seeing them all.”

Berner believes that when she began to seriously collect shoes, her friends’ were not entirely supportive. However, she has continued with the hobby despite this.

“They think it’s ridiculous,” Berner said. “They were like ‘you don’t even wear half of the shoes that you have, why are you buying more?’”

In contrast, Hayne’s parents have supported his hobby by passing down their tradition of collecting shoes.

“Both of my parents have a ton of shoes too, so it just kind of came in the family, I don’t think they think anything about it,” Haynes said.

Unlike Berner, King chooses to wear all of the shoes he buys, as he has an emotional attachment to them.

“I wear [my shoes], I don’t keep them in the box like other people do,” King said. “I [like my] shoes because of the story behind them.”