After a summer of adventures around the city, I finally decided to tackle the pile of dirty and scuffed shoes in our household and am happy to have breathed new life into several pairs! Here are a few tips and tricks for making well-loved shoes look like new again. I’d love to hear your tips as well for shoe cleaning and rejuvenation! You can see my reel video here for the cleaning in action.
1. Fabric Shoes
- Dampen the dirty areas with warm water
- Apply some Laundress Stain Remover directly onto stains
- Scrub dirty areas with an old toothbrush until a lather forms
- Rinse with warm water while scrubbing, or finish with a machine wash if the shoes are machine washable like these Rothy’s are.
- Dry outside under direct sunlight. The sun helps “bleach” white shoes. Avoid machine drying your shoes to minimize damage to them!
If you don’t have the Laundress on hand (tho I highly recommend keeping it around for all sorts of garment stains), several of you in my DMs also swear by mixing a little Tide laundry detergent with hot water and then using it to scrub, or using Oxiclean or Branch Basics.
2. Rubber Shoes
Such as Natives, Crocs or the cap toe or rubber soles on sneakers
- Cut off a piece of a Magic Eraser and slightly dampen it. I cut off a piece just to get more surface area and stretch one eraser into more #s of uses!
- Wipe off any stubborn scuffs. For sneakers, use the Magic Eraser only on the rubber toe caps and midsoles.
3. Leather Shoes
I previously did a tutorial on recoloring tears and scuffs on leather shoes, but this has been so helpful on my beloved shoes that I wanted to mention this tip again. For deep scuffs, I would suggest using a leather shoe paint instead of cream for more opaque color that will last longer.
