I know this is a totally random post compared to all my other post, but hey, why not. Maybe some lucky chap out there will benefit from it. So what’s better than living frugally? other than not? Well instead of buying a new shoe, I decided to see how far I can turn my old raggity shoe back into a faux new shoe sneakers kicks. I’ll show you what I did and how it turned out. So I guess you can call this a tutorial/how to. But How to clean dirty shoes doesn’t really have a nice ring to it. Alas I digress.

So here’s my old shoe pretty beat up and dirty huh? So lets try to clean it. If you are lazy you can just try and put it into your washing machine but most people say it might cause damage to your shoe. It might shrink, tear, or worst of all ruin your machine. Being a “motivated” person that I am, I decided not to and proceded with hand washing. So things you will need…

• A brush (If you don’t have one you can also use your toothbrush. (I wouldn’t use it again if I were you)
• liquid hand soap (good)
• toothpaste (better)
• shoe polisher (best) (You should use one of the above before you use this)
• some paper towel
• a shoe
• and patience

By good better best, I mean the degree of “brandnew ness”. For mine, I use all of the above. So first you want to take the laces off. Then put the laces in your hand wet it, and squirt some soap on it. Then while it still being in your hands, “wash your hand”. Mama always says I should kill 2 birds with one stone (No, not really). At first you’ll see really nasty, dirty water coming out of it. Keep going until the water becomes pretty clean. Then hang it on the side for it to dry.

While your lace is drying, get your brush and wet it. Then brush your shoe to get it pretty wet. After being coated with water, spray some of the liquid soap on the shoe and start scrubbing. Keep scrubbing until you give up. No, not after the first stroke. Come one, you can do it!

After scrubbing the shoe completely go ahead and rinse it with water and wipe the excess moisture off. You might also want to squeeze the tounge of the shoe too because it ussualy holds water in there like a sponge. While is still being semi-wet, squirt some toothpaste on it, and repeat the process.

Once the shoe looks pretty white, rinse and dry again. This time wipe it and make it as dry as you can. After making sure it’s dry, you can go and polish it off. Remember polish is like paint. Don’t polish stuff that has graphic on it. Just polish around it or not at all. Or if it’s white and black, you can sharpie it after polishing it like me for that ghettoic “DIY” look.

After being happy with the result you can dry it. Lean the tip of the shoe againts a wall so that it’s a bit vertical so the water can drip out from the inside of the shoe. I’ve read that you shouldn’t put it out in the sun because it might shrink the shoe, but it’s your choice. Personally I didn’t because I had another pair of shoe. Now clean everything up and pat yourself in the back. Congratulation you’ve just cleaned your shoe! Call your mama, or Mr. Clean and tell them of your accomplishment!

But wait, there’s more! So before I relaced my shoes, I thought to myself, “gee, the regular lacing is boring…” so I decided to have some fun with the lace. I found these 2 sites that shows you fun ways to relace your shoes. I couldn’t decide between hidden knot and lattice. So I did one on each shoe. But as you can see in the header image, I went ahead with lattice.

So I hope you learned how to clean your shoes from this post. Have fun, get messy and clean at the same time! See you around. More pictures here. I have no idea why you would want to look at dirty shoes. Please comment below if you do.

Oh and if you think this is to cheap for you, try Jason Markk’s cleaning solution. The design is absolutely gorgeous.

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