Shoes Day Tuesday: Shoe Maintenance 101

As you can tell from this post and this post, we here at Not a Corporate Fashun Blog spend a good deal of money on our shoes.  Why? Well, remember this post where Katie 2 said you should buy the best you can afford for classic items?  We believe that shoes fall into that category.  Because our shoes do fall within the splurge category, we want to make sure they last as long as possible and if something breaks, we tend to maintain and repair rather than repurchase.  So… let’s discuss maintenance.  Repair will be discussed in a separate post because apparently we’re wordy.

Let’s start this by stating the obvious – you need a good cobbler. A good cobbler is as essential to the real working girl as a good hairstylist, so do your homework and find one who knows his or her shit.  Nothing can ruin a pair of expensive shoes like bad maintenance or repairs.  We’ve found that word of mouth is the best way to find a good cobbler so ask your friends who they recommend.  We’ve also been pleased with the recommendations we’ve received from the sales associates in the designer section of most high end department stores (Katie 1 tips her imaginary hat to her favorite SA at Neiman Marcus).  Why do we specify high end department stores? Because their sales associates are more familiar with designer shoes and as a result they tend to be more familiar with cobblers who are experienced with designer shoes.  With that out of the way, let’s discuss maintenance. 

An ounce of prevention is worth more than a pound of cure. That absolutely applies to shoes.  Regular shoe maintenance can extend the life of any shoe (designer or not). Some regular maintenance you can do yourself.  Other regular maintenance should be left to the professionals.

DIY Regular Maintenance:

Regular maintenance we do ourselves? Waterproofing suede shoes (we love this Ugg spray-on protector) and cleaning and conditioning of leather and patent leather shoes. 

How do we clean our leather shoes? Well, Katie 1 employs a 2 step process that consists of a good cleaning with this leather cleaner and conditioner which she sprays on and buffs off with a soft cloth (microfiber works best).  After the initial cleaning she follows with leather moisturizer which she rubs on with her fingers and again buffs off with a soft cloth. 

How do we clean patent leather shoes? Katie 1 again prefers a 2 step process which consists of a good cleaning with Windex and a soft cloth. Seriously, Windex is absolutely the best thing to clean patent leather (just spray it on the cloth and buff).  She follows the cleaning with the moisturizer noted above which she rubs on with her fingers and buffs off with a soft cloth.  She’s also heard that Vaseline is a good patent leather cleaner and has used it in the past (rub on with fingers, buff off with soft cloth).  It’s messy but it does work, just not as well as her Windex + Moisturizer method. 

Besides regular cleaning, one of the easiest ways to prevent damage to your shoes is to take care in how they are stored.  In a perfect world, we would have an entire closet dedicated to our shoes just like Heather Dubrow. Unfortunately we don’t.  How do we store our shoes?  Katie 1 prefers clear plastic or canvas over the door shoe racks which keep her shoes off the floor and free of dust.  This prevents scratches which can rise from storing your shoes at the bottom of your closet or in a bin.  Katie 2 stores all of her shoes in their original boxes (she blames the slight case of OCD). Katie 1 also uses the soft bags her shoes come with to transport them to and from work.  This transportation method serves 2 purposes.  First: it prevents scratches and stains from other shit floating around in her bag.  Second: germs.  Shoes touch the floor.   The floor has germs.  Shoes in bag keep floor germs from touching Katie’s breakfast.   

Other DIY maintenance?  Odor elimination.  Let's face it, especially in the summer, feet sweat. Sweaty feet = smelly shoes.  How do we get rid of the smell and clean the inside of our shoes?  For dress shoes, we like to make a mixture of vodka and water, put it in a spray bottle and lightly spritz the inside of our shoes.  We let that sit for awhile and then we wipe out the shoes.  If we don't have time for that, we wipe them down with a cotton ball soaked in rubbing alcohol or straight vodka.  For athletic shoes, we sprinkle some baking soda in the inside and vacuum it out.  It's weird but it works.

Regular Maintenance Best Left to the Professionals:

As noted above, because we buy expensive shoes, most of our dress shoes (especially heels) have leather soles.  While this gives the shoe flexibility and makes it more comfortable, leather soles are much more delicate than the rubber or synthetic soles you find on less expensive shoes.  Because we actually wear our shoes, we need to take steps to protect the leather soles.  Enter the ball of foot rubber pad.  It’s a bit pricey but we swear by these thin protectors.  They make our shoes more stable (especially on slippery tile and marble floor) and prevent wear to the portions of the soles of our shoes that tend to wear out the fastest.  Other regular maintenance – regular heel cap replacement.  Once we see the metal nail thingy start to poke through our heel caps we get the caps replaced.  It’s cheaper to do this at the first sign of wear than when the heel cap is completely gone and you’re just walking on the nail. 

Other regular maintenance we tend to leave for professionals? If your fabulous new shoes are pinching or a little tight, the cobbler can stretch them to give you a leg up on breaking those puppies in.  Stretching doesn’t really work on patent leather and you probably don’t want to pay for what wearing them will eventually accomplish, so this isn’t a regular request like heel caps.  But if you can’t wear a pair because they are too uncomfortable, then stretching can keep them from languishing in the closet never worn (note – we’ve also had luck with DIY stretching which involves wearing them around the house in super thick socks).  Also, once a pair starts looking dull (even after regular cleaning) we will often take our shoes to be professionally cleaned and shined.