As a reseller, one of my day to day responsibilities is to buy and clean shoes. I absolutely LOVE to source shoes but I dislike cleaning them. So much so that when I was a new reseller, I would only pick up shoes that were clean. If I found a pair of shoes that required any cleaning at all, I would leave them behind. Over time, I learned that sometimes there can be great rewards in picking up shoes that require a little TLC. As a result, these days, I will pick up shoes that require some cleaning if they are in high demand and/or have high priced comps. So how do I clean all of the shoes that I find? Great question! For today’s post, I’m going to share with you the best shoe cleaning products that I use and also share what I use each of them for!
Product #1: Dr. Martens Wonder Balsam
This is my absolute favorite product for conditioning leather goods. (It is only meant to be used on genuine leather and not suede so keep that it mind before using.) To use it, all you have to do is rub a small amount on the product and then wait for it to dry. It is super easy to use and amazing at restoring heavily used leather items.
Product #2: Dawn Soap
Dawn soap is hands down one of the best all around cleaning soaps out there. The cleaning power in this soap is outstanding! It can remove grease stains and clean up dirty plastic surfaces just to name a few. I particularly love to use this to clean up shoes that have any plastic parts that require some TLC.
Product #3: Acetone Nail Polish Remover
This is one of the best shoe cleaning products for removing marker off of shoes. I don’t know about you but many of my thrift stores and buy-sell-trade stores love to write prices on the bottom of shoes. It can be super hard to remove at times but acetone nail polish remover seems to work wonders.
Product #4: Suede Bristle Brush
Cleaning suede can be a little tricky, but a suede bristle brush may help in restoring it to it’s original glory! This brush is great if your suede product needs a little facelift. All you have to do is rub the suede in a singular direction and it will start to come back to life.
Product #5: Totally Awesome Spray
My final shoe cleaning product is the Totally Awesome Spray! I actually learned about this product when I worked at Once Upon a Child many years ago. We would use it to clean the white rubber bottoms of shoes. To this day, I still use it religiously to clean shoes.
An Honorable Mention….. Magic Eraser
Personally, I do not use a magic eraser to clean shoes. However, many of you recommended it to me on Instagram. Based on what others have told me, they stated that it works wonders at cleaning white rubber on shoes. BUT it does make quite a mess if you scrape to hard so keep that in mind.
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Baci,
