Clean Smelly Shoes with Baking Soda
Baking soda has many superpowers, neutralizing unpleasant odors chief among them. Simply pour some into your shoes and let them sit overnight. The powder will soak up excess moisture while you sleep, leaving your kicks clean and dry in the morning. For a fresher scent, consider mixing in few drops of an essential oil with the baking soda before filling your shoes. Just don’t forget to empty the baking soda into the trash the next day—the only thing worse than smelly feet is leaving a powdery trail in your wake!
Once you’ve sopped up the extra moisture, craft a pair of homemade deodorizers to slip into your shoes between uses. Fill a pair of socks (or feet cut from nylon stockings) with baking soda, and knot the ends of each. You can even stuff the socks with kitty litter; made to tackle far more offending scents, it’ll work wonders for your shoes.
De-stink Your Shoes with Newspaper
Surprisingly, your morning paper can work overtime as an effective way to squash shoe odor. Stuff a generous amount of crumpled newspaper into each shoe—it will help your shoes dry even faster by absorbing extra moisture, thus eliminating any bacteria that comes with it. For a dose of sweet-smelling goodness, sprinkle a few drops of vanilla onto the newspaper first; come morning, your go-to loafers will not only be rid of their funky scent, but they’ll actually smell fresh.
Tea Bags to help Your Shoes Shoes Smell Good
Do your shoes stink up the room after a workout? Let’s not run everyone out of the gym. Put some tea bags in those sticky shoes as soon as you take them off. The tea bags will absorb the odor and leave your shoes smelling fresh.
And the bonus is that you likely already have tea bags at home (maybe in a flavor you didn’t love) or can get some hands on it pretty inexpensively!
Lemons
Get a lemon peel and cut off the skin and then leave the peels in your shoe overnight– you should have your shoes smelling like a lemonade stand.
Use Sunshine
If it’s sunny and warm out, place your shoes out in the sun for a few hours. Leaving them in the sun can dry them out and make them less hospitable to odor-causing bacteria.
Customer Deodorizer Pouches for Stinky Shoes
Make your own deodorizer pouches for your shoes. Not only can you customize the size for your shoes, but you can also reuse the pouches again and again. You’ll always have sweet-smelling shoes. Winner! To make the all natural basic deodorizer, you will need the following supplies:
- baking soda
- essential oils – lavender, peppermint or whatever your favorite essential oil might be
Use Your Freezer
You can use your freezer to help eliminate shoe odors too! Start by placing them in a sealed ziplock bag, then place the bag in your freezer overnight. The odor-causing bacteria won’t survive the frigid temperatures, making this a simple and effective intervention.
Coffee Filters
Insert a coffee filter into each shoe and fill it with baking soda to get rid of that stench. The baking soda will absorb the rank smell. You know that if it works in your fridge, it’ll work in your shoes, too!
I like the ease of this simple stinky shoe solution since everything you need is right in your kitchen!
Use Rubbing Alcohol
Spray the inside of the shoes with rubbing alcohol. This method will help dry out the sources of odor and hopefully allow you full use of the shoes again.
Not only is rubbing alcohol an antiseptic, but it also evaporates quite quickly. In fact, it evaporates so readily that it helps other forms of moisture like sweat dry out too.
A Bar Of Soap
Finally, the last method I wanted to mention for removing odor from shoes is to place a bar of soap inside the shoes overnight. The porous soap will help absorb odors and leave behind a fresh, clean scent. (It’s also a great method to try if you have a few spare bars of soap in your cupboard or closet!)
Fabric softener sheets
Deodorizing sneakers calls for strong stuff. Tuck a new dryer fabric softener sheet into each sneaker and leave overnight to neutralize odours (just remember to pull them out before wearing the sneaks). It’s also a great idea to deodorize places where you store your shoes, such as your gym bag. Drop a dryer sheet into the bottom of a gym bag and leave it there until your nose lets you know it’s time to renew it.
Salt
Sneakers and other canvas shoes can get pretty smelly, especially if you wear them without socks in the summertime. Knockdown the odour and soak up the moisture by occasionally sprinkling a little salt in your canvas shoes as a shoe deodorizer.
Baby powder
Using baby powder is a precautionary step that you can take before putting your shoes on to keep them from smelling. If you find that you are prone to having stinky shoes, rub baby powder on your feet before slipping them on.
Cat litter
This may seem a little bit strange, but cat litter contains a lot of deodorizers and absorbs liquids. Line the bottom of your shoes with cat litter and let it sit overnight. Dump it out in the morning and wipe down your shoe with a damp cloth to give it a final clean.
