Shoe Care Tips

I found a few shoe care tips in Bruce Lubin and Jeanne Bossolina Lubin’s book Who Knew? 3:  Household Heroes, Money Saving Miracles & Astonishing Uses for Everyday Items.  I hope that they don’t mind if I include some of them in the next edition of The OddShoeFinder.com Shoe Wearer’s Handbook. I have to warn you, though, that I have not yet tested any of their suggestions.  Proceed at your own risk!

The Lubins say that you coating your leather shoes with hair conditioner and letting it soak  will help repel the salt that goes along with winter in colder climates and keep the leather supple.

To remove scuff marks, the Lubins suggest wetting a rag with nail polish remover and rubbing the scuff marks “lightly but quickly.”  As with many suggestions in the Shoe Wearer’s Handbook, you may want to try the nail polish on a less conspicuous part of the shoe before going after the more obvious scuff marks.  Different materials and finishes may react differently to the acetone in the nail polish remover.

Another low tech means of removing scuff marks proposed by the Lubins is rubbing a little baking soda into the marks.

Placing a fabric softener sheet in your smelly shoes helps get rid of any foul odors – or any odors at all!  Having driven with a box of 160 fabric softener sheets 700 miles from the Super WalMart in my hometown in Alabama to my current home in Northern Virginia (One of the major disadvantages of living in the Washington, DC area is the scarcity of WalMarts.), I can attest to the power of fabric softener sheets.

Finally, a little liquid correcting fluid (BIC Wite-Out, e.g.) can be used to cover scuff marks on your white canvas shoes.

Strange, but true, story about liquid correcting fluid:

As a boy, Michael Nesmith of the Monkees and his young friends filled bottles of Liquid Paper (Then called “Mistake Out.”) for his mother, Bette Nesmith Graham.  Graham was a Dallas secretary and single mother who invented the product.

Graham made and sold the product part-time until her boss fired her for making a mistake that could not be corrected by Liquid Paper.  The firing turned out to be a blessing in disguise – she turned the product into a full-time business and sold the company for $47.5 million six months before her death in 1980.

Author: admin

Colin hails from Melbourne, Australia and has worn shoes for over forty years now.