Tuesday, February 16, 2010

How To Clean Your Sneakers/Shoes >

Being a noob in cleaning sneakers, I did some research and with a little understanding and "diskarte," I present a little tutorial on how to clean your sneakers... Well, this is how I did it at least. 

What you'll need:

Running Water
toothbrush
1 smooth rag for the shoes top portion
1 rag for the sole
soap
pail or basin

Let's start...

1. Get your shoes (duh!) 
2. Pour water onto your shoes... get it soaked!
3. Remove the shoelaces if it has any. Reason I put this after pouring water instead of pouring onto it to give time for the water to seep thru your shoes while you're removing the laces.
4. Rub your sole rag onto soap or pour it onto the rag. Your choice depending if you have liquid, powdered, or a bar.
5. Clean the sides of the sole and then sole itself
6. After that, get the smooth rag for shoes with suede or anything that needs something smooth rather than brushing it. 
7. Once again, apply the soap. What I did on mine was just get pinches of powdered soap and sprinkled it on the areas where I was to use the smooth rag. 
8. Now get your toothbrush. 
9. Apply soap on brush and onto the areas that need brushing. In my case, my rubber shoes had a net-like skin which could take mild brushing. 
10. Rinse well...
11. Pour water inside the shoe. then pour it out. 
12. Apply soap inside the shoe by hand and rub it clean all over the insides of the shoe.
13. Pour water again... and again... and again until soap suds aren't visible anymore to be sure you rinsed it well.
14. Set your shoes aside to dry 
15. Get your shoelaces and apply soap on it or slide it in between a rag with soap. I put this after to give time for the shoes to get excess water off before putting it out for final air drying 
16. Rinse your shoelaces.
17. Pick up your shoes and laces and put it in a ventilated place. I put mine in front of the fan. 
17B -  Some say put paper towels inside to absorb the moisture :) Didn't have any so I just let the fan run on high. 
18. Clean up your wash area. 
19. Go back and look at your shoes and smile at how clean it looks!!!

NOTE: You can rinse the shoes every after step like after the sole or after the smooth parts. It's really up to you!

Enjoy!

Cy

3 comments:

Unknown said...

thanks for this. can't do it though for suede clydes. gumsoles are very sensitive to dirt & drying up too. have you seen Just For Kicks? http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0451090/

Franco Madrid said...

how about directly under the sun...will it destroy my sneakers in any way? planning to clean my shoes in the next days

Cyril said...

TM, yeah suedes are really hard. I don't know what to do with mine. for the suede parts on some of my sneaks, I just used a microfiber rag.

Kurlie, under the sun is ok since it's part of air drying anyway :)