Micro-Actions: Caring For Your Shoes

While getting my entire shoe range out for a full polish might seem like the perfect weekend activity, in reality finding a two or three hour slot of time to do some shoe or clothing maintenance rarely is possible with two children aged seven and two in the household. Weekends are for us and for them.

I want to take good care of both my shoes and clothes, and while I don’t recommend skipping cleaning and polishing your fine leather shoes, I find there is way to care for your footwear if you can’t set aside those two or three hours regularly: Micro-actions. Nothing groundbreaking here, just some consistency and some stamina.

Micro-actions, at least as I present them here, are seemingly small actions that leads to a larger impact. The term is used in a range of areas, eg. mangement training and personal development.

Here are three of the micro-actions I consistently try to commit to in order to care for my shoes.

Needless to say, this is by no means the only area where micro-actions can work, and also not a particular important area in comparison to personal development or the like. But clothing, shoes and style is what we talk about here, so here we go:

Immidiate Shoe Trees

Two of the main purposes of shoe trees are keeping the shoe’s shape and removing moist built up by wear. It’s simply a good thing for the shoe.

So, when I get home and take of my shoes, I immidiately put shoe trees in them. You might want to let the shoes steam of a little bit on a hot summer’s day, but really the shoe trees should serve the same function.

It might seem pedantic to highlight “immidiately” putting shoe trees in shoes. And surely, there are no major harm done if your shoes are left without shoe trees for a day or two occasionally. I do it myself on shorter trips where there is a need to pack light and compact, i.e. no shoe trees.

But the hack here - for me - is just to get it done as soon as I take my shoes off - because then I don’t have to think further about it.

Evening Brush

If I have worn leather shoes during the day, and of course put shoe trees in them when I got home, I take a few minutes in the evening, after the kids have been put to bed, to brush the shoes and remove dust and dirt.

For calf and grain shoes I use a horsehair brush and for suede shoes I supplement with a rubber brush that removes dirt and stains and raises the nap on the suede a bit. If necessary I also refresh the shine of calf leather with a polishing brush, but rarely apply extra polish. I save that for the thorough shine.

This exercise takes perhaps ten minutes for a pair of shoes, and I think it is time well spend as I now know that the shoes are ready for the next use (or perhaps for a real shine).

Never two days in a row

The third micro-action has as a prerequisite that you have a shoe range to rotate from to give the shoes a break and not wear them several days in a row.

Again, there is no harm done in wearing the same pair of shoes two days in a row once in a while, but in the long run there should be the benefit of longevity if you don’t. Not only due to the actual number of wears but also the opportunity for the shoes to rest and let moist disappear from the inside of the shoe (because of the shoe trees you put in them, right).

The three micro-actions above doesn’t replace a thorough clean and shine, but I imagine that micro-actions like these not only leads to shoes lasting longer, but also to greater enjoyment of wear. At least it does for me.

Please do chip in if you have some micro-actions that you want to share.