Cleaning your shoes every season will make them last a lot longer

Know the feeling of buying a fresh pair of shoes and wearing them for the first few times? Unfortunately, their clean look and feel only last so long. More often than not, shoes you put away at the end of the season look a lot more tired than they did at first.

So how do you maintain their good looks and make sure that you don’t have to buy a new pair every year just because they feel old and tired? The secret is regularly cleaning them. We get the temptation of just throwing your sneakers in the closet after wearing them all spring and summer. But what if you could pick them up again next year and feel like you’re wearing a freshly bought pair of shoes? Regular cleaning and maintenance are crucial for enjoying your footwear for many years. If you rarely clean your shoes, the dirt builds up and can seriously damage the fabrics. Especially for winter boots, the harsh weather and salty streets are a deadly combo. For winter wear, you might consider cleaning them every few weeks. For sneakers and other shoes that don’t get a lot of moisture and aren’t visibly dirty, cleaning them after every season should be enough.

People often think that cleaning their shoes will take a long time, and even if they have the time, they might not know exactly which products and techniques to use for the best results. In fact, there are many user-friendly cleaning products available for every material that leave your shoes clean and fresh in just a few minutes. So even if your sneakers are muddy from a week-long festival, cleaning them at home with the right products can still be very fast and easy. Regular cleaning also ensures that your shoes won’t stay dirty for long periods and makes noticing possible damages much easier, so you can deal with repairs before they get too tricky.

Once you’ve cleaned your shoes for storage, use a shoetree or fill them with paper towels to maintain their shape, put them in a dry place, and let them breathe. If you keep your shoes away from moisture and dust, they will be fresh every time you take them out of their box, and you won’t have to spend money on a new pair at the start of every season.

If you’re interested in giving your shoes a makeover, check out our cleaning kit or bring your footwear to us!

Hey Sneakerheads and people who love their shoes!

When you buy a new coat or a jacket, or any piece of clothing really, it has a label that tells you how to take care of it: hand wash or washing machine/ dry cleaners only, max water temperature, tumble dryer or no no, etc.
However, when you get yourself a pair of nice sneakers or shoes, you get nothing of that. Unfair, right? We know! Therefore, we are here to help 😉 We are going to send you some cool shoe care tips every now and then, so that your favorite pair serves you a long and pleasant service!
Today we want to break the myth that a mighty washing machine can take care of these dusty dirty pair of sneakers you were dancing in on a music festival in the forest. Nope, in fact, if shoes could speak – 95% of them would scream its way out of that tumble barrels!

And here are some of the reasons why:

• Washing machine can and most probably will damage the glue in trainers, which can cause them falling apart and the yellow glue coming out on the edges (not pretty)
• Sneakers will lose its form and shape, especially if you use high temperature, the fabric can shrink
• The detergent will leave yellow staining that is hard to remove (we had a fair share of those cases to fix)
• In case the inside lining/ insoles are colored – it will cause paint leakage and staining the whole shoe. After this the shoes go straight into the trash bin, unless you don’t mind a bit of a discolored hippy look, of course)
  

In case you do not trust us and still want to risk it, here are some tips that could (possibly) save that pair of trainers:

• Remove laces, insoles and any dirt before putting shoes into the washing machine
• Put the trainers in a special washing bag and add some towels to go along
• Use cold water and NO tumble dryer!
• Put to air-dry, preferably shady spot with some shoe trees or just paper inside to preserve the form

Want to wash your shoes safely? Hand wash only! We shall be giving more tips on how to do that with different type of materials in our next posts!

Yours, Cleanstep Team!