Forums >Gears and Wears>How do you clean your shoes?
My Saucony Kinvaras are only a few weeks old but already starting to smell. We keep all our shoes by our entryway, so it's making the house stink. Will Febreze do any harm to them? Thanks.
Good Bad & The Monkey
Scrunched up newspaper inside the shoes when not wearing em.
I NEVER wash my shoes, except when running through creeks, tho.
I'm running somewhere tomorrow. It's going to be beautiful. I can't wait.
Poor baby
Feeling the growl again
I run in the rain.
Do you run sockless? I can't say my shoes have ever been a smell problem....but for friends who run sockless they reek.
"If you want to be a bad a$s, then do what a bad a$s does. There's your pep talk for today. Go Run." -- Slo_Hand
I am spaniel - Crusher of Treadmills
After really muddy runs I'll brush them off and then run them through the washing machine on gentle then fill with newspaper and allow them to dry. This is only necessary for my daughter's shoes to avoid her whining too much about how ugly they've gotten. I really don't know if this would remove stank, that's probably nastier than mud...
I had a couple pairs of shoes that got pretty smelly last summer (probably from dumping water over my head on runs, basically washing all my sweat down and into my shoes -- they'd be waterlogged when I finished my runs). I washed them in our front-loader with Penguin sport detergent (which seems to take the stank out of running clothes); it knocked the smell down but did not remove it. I've subsequently tried regular laundry detergent with the same result. So good luck.
Oh, and those stupid little odor-absorber balls are worthless.
"I want you to pray as if everything depends on it, but I want you to prepare yourself as if everything depends on you."
-- Dick LeBeau
I keep them in my trunk. We don't have a garage and it's just too cruel to keep them anywhere else.
When I'm done running in them, I spray them up with Febreeze and keep them as casual shoes in the closet.
"If you have the fire, run..." -John Climacus
Best Present Ever
I think febreze smells as bad as any bad smell without fully removing the originial bad smell. The combo of bad smell+febreze seems worse than the bad smell alone.
Semi tangent - does febreze actually do anything besides make (clothes/couch/whatever) smell like bad smell + "febreze smell"?? I've never understood that stuff.
ANYWAY, the stench starts with moisture and growing beasties. Keep your shoes dry. Trent's newspaper trick is helpful. If you must wash them... and after some ultras where my shoes are caked with mud, I do... stuff them with paper to dry them faster.
Aside from that, I don't wash them. But then I don't have trouble with smell. Except for trail shoes that went through funkified mud. If my shoes smelled super bad, I'd probably want to do something for sure.
Not if you put A LOT and get the shoe right up to your face and inhale DEEPLY.
The problem is microbes.
Some solutions:
1. Rotate a couple pairs to let them dry out a couple days each.
2. Take out wet insoles and let them dry separately.
3. Apply Germ-x or rubbing alcohol.
4. Run into the wind so as to keep the stench behind you.
Disclaimer: I personally abhor clean, shiny running shoes. On those rare occasions when I buy a new pair I love to run through the first baptismal font I find--an oily mud puddle is best.
Speed my steps along your path, according to your will.
Self anointed title
microbes.
Miniature gowns?
Heavens no. For clarity: my crobes.
I've got a fever...
On your deathbed, you won't wish that you'd spent more time at the office. But you will wish that you'd spent more time running. Because if you had, you wouldn't be on your deathbed.
"run" "2" "eat"
i found the best way to keep my shoes clean is to give up running. so far, it's working marvelously.
i find the sunshine beckons me to open up the gate and dream and dream ~~robbie williams
Am I doing this right?
This.
I keep mine in the garage. The dog doesn't seem to mind, at least he hasn't told me yet that he minds.
No excuses....