Extend the Life of Your Sneakers: Essential Cleaning and Care Tips for Shoes

To be honest, there is no such hard and fast or fixed rule that you can use for the cleaning schedule of your sneakers, as it completely depends on how often you wear them and what kind of places you visit. If you are someone who wears their sneakers almost every day, either for exercising or for work, then you should be wiping them after every 2-3 days at least to make them look neat and clean. Moreover, this simple tip can easily protect the footwear from any dust that can possibly be lodged in the fabric of the shoes. In case you are using them on rainy days, then you should clean them immediately, as dirt, mud, and sweat may cause harm to the quality of the fabric very quickly. Additionally, an easy solution would be having some shoe cleaning wipes or brushes by your side, as using them to clean hardly takes one minute.

It is absolutely normal to have stains and scuffs on your shoes sometimes, and these issues can easily be resolved by just treating them in the right away. The user can simply take the help of cleaning wipes that are specifically designed for sneakers, to rub on the specified area to prevent the stain from sticking to the fabric. However, you can also use stain removers or even white sneaker pens to remove the marks on white rubber soles and leather shoes, which makes them look as good as new. Along with this, people also face the bad odour problems in the shoes after a heavy workout session or long wearing time. And to get rid of this, you can simply place charcoal bags in them and leave them overnight, which will pull all the bad smells to it and provide you with no-smelling shoes.

To prevent your shoes from ruining, you should never dry them in a dryer or in direct sunlight. As heat can significantly cause separation of soles, shrinking of fabric, and can also change the colour of your white sneakers to yellow. However, one of the reliable methods to dry your sneakers is to air drying it, because it certainly does not contain any harmful elements. Firstly, you should take out the laces and insoles to allow airflow through the sneakers, then fill them with a microfiber cloth or paper towels. In addition to it, you can use a drying shoe rack, as that might work because the shoes are then elevated and can get better airflow. Also, placing silica gel packs or cedar shoe trees in the sneakers helps them to dry the sneakers more quickly. 

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Proper storage is equally important as proper cleaning when it comes to preserving your sneakers for a long time. Most of the time, people do not think about keeping it in a desired manner and just throw it in a heap, which makes it creased, scuffed, and distorted. Therefore, if you want your shoes to look new and fresh every time you wear them, then you need to store them in a cool and dry place, where they are not in contact with the sun, as it can potentially fade their colour and can also affect the adhesive that holds the sneakers together. Moreover, you can also use transparent shoe boxes and sneaker organisers that efficiently allow you to store pairs in a dust-proof manner, and along with that, as the boxes are transparent, you do not need to open them to find out which one is in, which ultimately means less messiness. Along with all these strategies, you can also place silica gel packs inside the boxes containing white and leather sneakers in order to avoid moisture build-up and yellowness.

Some of the very simple tips and tricks can certainly help the user in maintaining their sneakers with just a small level of effort. The first and foremost step that you should take is to undo the laces before you take the pair off,  as this will prevent the pair from having the heels rub and wear out. And you can also switch between using 2-3 pairs of shoes rather than having just one that you wear every day. Along with this, you can simply spray your sneakers with a protective spray on a weekly basis, especially before it rains, and you can also put shoe trees inside overnight to keep them in their shape. This is because the spray prevents stains and water from forming over it and damaging the outer and inner layers of the shoe. In addition to it, you can also have some sneaker wipes with you so that you can quickly use them in 30 seconds when you walk by and find the need to clean the footwear.