How to wash white sneakers made of fabric or leather?

White sneakers are very attractive, stylish shoes. However, in urban dust conditions it is difficult to keep them clean at all times. Quite quickly, such shoes take on a stale, sloppy appearance. How to wash white fabric sneakers? How to wash shoes made of genuine leather?

Proper preparation

It is necessary to start washing only after all preliminary procedures have been completed.

What should you do before washing?

• Remove the insoles and laces (they are washed separately).
• Fasten all fasteners.
• Brush the top to remove dry dirt and dust.
• Remove dried dirt and debris accumulated in the tread from the sole (you can use a clothing or toothbrush, or a thin toothpick for this purpose).
• Black stripes, if they appear on the side of the sole while walking, can be erased with an eraser.
• Remove yellowness from the sole, otherwise when washed it may transfer to the top of the sneakers. To do this, you can wipe the yellow areas with cotton wool or a sponge soaked in acetone, white spirit or nail polish remover. You can also dilute bleach with active oxygen in water and soak the soles of your sneakers in it for one or two hours.If the yellowness is slight, you should try regular lemon juice.

If there are heavy stains on the sneakers, it is advisable to remove them before the main wash, since it may not cope with such stains. How to do this depends on the type of dirt, as well as on the material from which the sneakers are made: textile and leather require a different approach.

Cleaning fabric sneakers

Dirty stains on fabric shoes can be cleaned with any whitening toothpaste using an old toothbrush. The textile inserts on leather sneakers are also cleaned in the same way. After this, just wipe them with a damp cloth.

If the stains are serious enough, you can prepare a more effective composition. To do this, you need to carefully mix a teaspoon of table vinegar and peroxide until a thick paste forms and add to them a tablespoon of powder made from laundry soap (rubbed on a fine grater).

For models with mesh inserts, this mixture is too aggressive. It is better to clean the mesh with soda, slaked citric acid or citrus juice.

We take out the paint

If paint gets on white shoes, the above remedies will not help to deal with it. Special components will be required. It can be:

• "White Spirit";
• nail polish remover;
• acetone.

Soak a cotton pad in any of these liquids and wipe the paint stain several times.

Remove paint from leather models with a soda solution (a teaspoon in half a glass of water). If the stain is too old and stubborn, you will have to purchase white shoe paint and repaint the sneakers. Or use dry cleaning services.

The composition of the fabrics used to make sneakers may vary.Accordingly, their reaction to certain detergent components is quite difficult to predict. Therefore, before using, be sure to try their effect on an inconspicuous area of ​​the sneaker.

Once stubborn dirt has been removed, you can begin washing your shoes.

What and how to wash?

Before you start washing your white sneakers, there are some important things to understand. Thus, machine washing is contraindicated in the following cases:

• fabric sneakers have damage on the upper or sole;
• products are inexpensive, not of very high quality;
• leather sneakers;
• they have small fragile parts (reflectors, for example);
• The washing machine does not have (or does not work) the “Sport”, “Delicate Wash” mode or the option to turn off spinning and drying: washing in the normal mode is strictly prohibited for such shoes.

In addition, depending on the composition of the textile, yellow spots and streaks may appear after washing with regular washing powder, especially when using conditioner. Therefore, to wash sports shoes, it is best to use powdered laundry soap or oxygen bleach.

How to machine wash?

If there are no contraindications for machine washing, it is quite possible to wash white sneakers in a machine, following these instructions:

1. A suitable detergent is poured into the tray.
2. Set the machine to a delicate wash option.
3. Turn off spinning and drying, if this model of washing machine has one.
4. Be sure to install an additional rinse.
5. The temperature should not exceed 40 degrees.
6. Before putting the sneakers into the drum, it is better to place them in a special protective bag.

If these conditions are met, you can safely put even shoes whose uppers are made of mesh material into the car.

Wash by hand

When hand washing, sports shoes, after the same preliminary preparation, are soaked for an hour or two in a solution of the recommended detergent. Next, carefully but gently brush the top of the sneakers (only a brush with soft bristles will do, it will not damage the fabric) and very carefully rinse off any remaining detergent.

What about genuine leather?

It is contraindicated for natural leather to come into contact with water for a long time: it warps and becomes rough. Therefore, dirt must be removed from it quickly, using water for a short time. The sole is carefully washed under running water, being careful not to wet the leather parts. To clean them, it is often enough to treat them with a thick, foam-rich laundry soap, which is applied with a sponge.

You can also polish such shoes with a mixture of starch and milk in a 1:2 ratio. After 15 minutes, wash off the remaining composition with a rag. After complete drying, the skin must be polished with a special transparent cream.

Laces and insoles

To return the laces to their original cleanliness, they should be soaked for about half an hour (or a little longer) in a solution of high-quality oxygen bleach. After this, they are washed with simple laundry soap and rinsed.

The cleanliness of the insoles is crucial for the further use of sneakers - sweat molecules and all kinds of microbes, which, due to the active wearing of sports shoes, accumulate on the insoles in huge quantities, can cause not only an unpleasant specific odor, but also the development of difficult-to-treat fungal diseases.

It is best to use laundry soap to wash insoles. They rub the brush thickly with it, and then intensively treat the surface of each insole with it. Now all that remains is to rinse the soap, wait until the excess water drains, and lay the insoles to dry on a flat surface away from heating devices (otherwise they will become rough and severely deformed).

How to dry sneakers?

Improper drying can lead to unexpected troubles: shoes will become covered with yellow spots, wrinkle, acquire an unpleasant odor, lose their shape or become rough and begin to rub your feet.

Proper drying:

1. The products drain for some time in the bathroom.
2. They are filled with dry paper napkins, placed away from sources of strong heat and the paper is changed as they become wet.

In summer, shoes will dry faster in the fresh air in the shade (yellowness may appear from the sun).

In winter, you can speed up the process by using fabric bags with dry rice or silica gel (this is a filler for baby diapers) as a filler for drying sneakers.

Improper drying:

• The shoes were filled with newspapers (they would stain the inside of the shoes and stain the socks).
• Hot salt was poured inside.
• We inserted an electric dryer into the sneakers.
• We placed them on a radiator or heater.
• Dried with a hair dryer.
• Dried by machine.

In the last five cases, there is a risk of deforming the products (their shrinkage is also possible, after which they will become small), and leather models may even crack.

Caring for white shoes is always problematic. And if the shoes are sports, the problem is threefold, because they get dirty more often and more intensely than usual.Therefore, when purchasing white “sweatpants”, you should be prepared for the fact that they will have to be frequently and painstakingly cleaned and washed.