Ask a Clean Person: Fragrant Shoe Season Arrives Early
Tags: Advice, Cleaning

I don’t want to get rid of my sandals but seriously, they are disgusting. I am not a Sweaty Person or a Stinky Person in general. My socks never get stinky or sweaty, not even the ones I wear when I work out. Come the spring/sandal time, though, and I swear by 10 a.m. it smells like there’s a dirty dog and a bag of Fritos under my desk. I make myself sick, and I’m terrified that if I can smell my own feet, everyone else can, too.

This happens with tiny strappy sandals, flip-flops — any shoe I wear without socks. I’ve tried sprinkling them with baking soda and letting them sit overnight, which helps for a day, maybe two. Can you help me? I don’t see how any kind of stink-destroying insoles could work here, since it’s only my OPEN shoes that smell like the devil. Why is this?

This happens to my best friend, too, so I know I’m not the only one. Are we just The Stinky Feet Girls? I would give up on sandals entirely, but we live in Texas and shoes with socks just aren’t an option when it’s 103 degrees for 90 days running. Help us? Please?

You might be The Stinky Feet Girls. But you know what? That’s fine! Sometimes I eat potato chips in my bed while watching episodes of The Sopranos that I’ve seen a hundred times. We’re all gross in our own ways.

I think what we need here is a two-pronged approach: foot care and shoe care. Because you might be a Stinky Feet Girl, I would definitely suggest that you start using a daily foot powder like Gold Bond or Tinactin. There are also a whole heap of foot antiperspirant products out there that work a little differently from the powders, which absorb sweat but don’t stop it. Also they have delightful names like The Ugly Little Bottle, Ghost Grip, and Neat Feat. My suggestion would be for you and your friend to each buy one different product, test it out, compare notes, and if the first thing you tried doesn’t work, try another. Just in the same way with deodorant for the underarms you may need to experiment with different brands to find the one that works best with your body’s makeup.

So that’s step one. Step two is to treat the shoes themselves. There are a ton of odor-neutralizing shoe sprays on the market, and I particularly like products made specifically for getting the stank out of athletic shoes, because they’re optimized for use on some of the smelliest shoes out there. Here’s one from Dr. Scholl and another from KIWI for you to check out. It may be that during the summer months you have to spray your shoes down each night when you take them off, but once you get into the habit of doing that it’ll become something you don’t even think about, you just automatically do. Like how you make your bed every morning. Automatically. Right???

I realize the topic of smelly shoes, feet, and all manner of foot/smells have already been covered. However, I have a smelly foot problem that is slightly unique. I am a lucky lady in that I get to walk to work every day — no public transport needed. As I am a comfort-over-style kind of gal, I walk to work in sneakers and change into heels once I get there. When I get to work in the morning I am usually first or second and can easily slip off my socks and sneakers with little embarrassment; I store my shoes in one of my filing cabinets, to keep any stink encased in steel. The problem is that in the afternoon I am surrounded by several coworkers (admittedly some very attractive coworkers, though that shouldn’t make a difference) and I feel extremely embarrassed when opening my smelly shoe drawer. Currently I have tried scent balls or sent sprays, but both just mix with the foot smell. I also have used baking soda which works well in my shoes but no so much in the drawer! Please help!

You just need to put a Bad Air Sponge up in that bitch. That’ll do ya.

Another idea is to get your paws on a pair of sneaker balls and pop ’em inside your kicks after you take them off in the morning, so that they absorb the smells right out of your sneaks while they’re sitting in the drawer. Sneaker balls are pretty easy to find — most athletic shoe stores like Foot Locker will carry them — and they’re pretty inexpensive. Amazon lists several options in the $4 to $10 range.

If the drawer isn’t big enough to fit a canister of Bad Air Sponge, you can also check out a thing called Fridge It. They’re designed for refrigerators (as if that weren’t utterly clear/why did I just explain that??), but the principle of odor-sucking-upping is the same, so they’ll be small enough to pop into a desk drawer.

I recently bought these cute flats from the Friday Bargain Bin. I love them! Great find!

The first day I wore them was a gray day that turned into a rainy day, and they got wet in the rainwater. Now they’re a little dirty. Since they’re dyed leather I’m not sure how to go about cleaning them. A damp paper towel got way too much orange on it for me to be comfortable continuing. My roommate hasn’t worn hers yet … should I get her drunk when she does and switch out her new unstained ones for mine like in the Judgement of Solomon?

Yes, you should absolutely do that. I’m not even kidding. All’s fair in love, war and Friday Bargain Bin Anthropologie Trinket Flats.

Okay no, not really! (I’ve been working on this whole Ask an Astonishingly Mean Clean Person persona but it’s not really taking.) You can try a couple different things.

Since they’re just “a little dirty,” a damp (DAMP NOT WET!)(I swear one of these days I’m going to have pop-up sponges made up that say “DAMP NOT WET!” on them and make a killing selling them to people who are forever staining their couches and shoes and carpets and such) sponge with a little blurt of dishsoap will probably take the grime right up.

If that doesn’t appeal to you, you can get your hands on some neutral-colored shoe polish and give the shoes a good going-over with it or grab a pack of these nifty Express Shine Wipes from KIWI, which will clean the dirt off and shine the leather back up as well. “Neutral,” by the by, is a pretty standard shoe polish color, and you really shouldn’t have any trouble finding it.

In terms of the dye coming up as you’re cleaning them, unless the color of the shoe is visibly changing its color, don’t worry too much about it. Dye is just forever leeching out of things — remember the girl who had the wild makeout session on her carpet and got dark denim dye all over the place?

Previously: I Drank the Juice; I Cleaned It Up.

Jolie Kerr is not paid to endorse any of the products mentioned in this column, but she sure would be very happy to accept any free samples the manufacturers care to send her way! Are you curious to know if she’s answered a question you have? Do check out the archives, listed by topic. More importantly: is anything you own dirty?

Photo by iofoto, via Shutterstock