So you dropped a few hundred bucks on a brand new pair of shoes. At first everything is great: eyes everywhere darting to your feet in awe. But then November approaches, and it starts to get cold, and suddenly the ground is covered in a light dusting of snow. It’s up to you to take care of your shoes: they need constant, rigorous upkeep, weekly even, and you need equipment to do it right. We got you covered.
The Leather Lotion
The first step of any sensible shoe maintenance routine is a simple cleaning, usually with nothing more than a soft cloth and some water. But once your shoes are free of dirt, you’ll want to ensure that the leather, itself, is treated and healed, and for that job there’s nothing better than a simple leather lotion. Rub it into your shoes with a clean, dry cloth and let it sink in to work its magic.
The Shoe Trees
No, not a tree that grows designer shoes, but rather an adjustable skeleton of sorts that fits inside your shoes when you aren’t wearing them. Designed to absorb excess moisture from odoriferous sweat or precipitation, as well as help retain the shoe’s original shape, a good set of shoe trees can extend the life of your favorite shoes by years.
The Polish
It wouldn’t be proper shoe care without a tub of shoe polish, of course, but the trick here is to ensure that you’ve got precisely the right color. It’s always a safe bet to purchase it along with the shoes in question—that way you’ll be able to shade-match straight away. Once a week you’ll want to put a bit of this on a cloth reserved exclusively for the job and rub it into the shoe vigorously, keeping that leather looking up to snuff.
The Shine Brush
A high-quality horse hair shine brush shouldn’t run you more than $15 bucks, and it’s well worth the minuscule investment—one of these will keep your shoes looking like new even years after purchase. After you finish cleaning and polishing, all you need to do is take the brush to the leather and buff in a steady back and forth motion.
The Overshoe
When the weather begins to get seriously bad, your best bet to lengthen the life of your shoes may be to simply skip the nice shoes altogether, opting instead for a pair of functional winter boots. But if you're heading somewhere fancy, that's not going to cut it. Consider investing in a set of overshoes—simple rubber shells that slip over the outside of your shoes and keep them concealed from the cold and snow, sort of like gloves for your feet.
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