How to wash white sneakers from fabric or leather?

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

Proper preparation

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

What should be done before washing?

• Take out the insoles and laces (they are washed separately).
• To 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 clothes or toothbrush, as well as a thin toothpick for this purpose).
• Black stripes, if they formed when walking on the side of the sole, can be erased with an eraser.
• Remove yellowness from the sole, otherwise when washing it can go to the top of the sneakers. To do this, you can wipe the yellow spots with cotton or a sponge soaked in acetone, White Spirit or nail polish remover. You can also dilute bleach with active oxygen in water and lower the sole soles into it for one or two hours. If the yellowness is small, you should try the usual lemon juice.

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

We clean fabric sneakers

Dirty stains on cloth shoes can be cleaned with any whitening toothpaste using an old toothbrush. Textile inserts on leather sneakers are cleaned in the same way. After that, they will remain wiped with a damp cloth.

If the spots are serious enough, you can prepare a more effective composition. To do this, carefully remove until a thick paste is formed on a teaspoon of table vinegar and peroxide and add to them a tablespoon of powder prepared from laundry soap (rub it on a fine grater).

For models with mesh inserts, this mixture is too aggressive. The mesh is best cleaned with soda, slaked with citric acid or citrus juice.

Drawing paint

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

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

In any of these fluids, a cotton pad is moistened and a spot of paint is wiped several times.

From leather models, paint is removed with a solution of soda (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 in the manufacture of sneakers may be different. Accordingly, their reaction to certain detergent components is rather difficult to predict. Therefore, before using, be sure to try their action on an inconspicuous section of the sneaker.

After persistent impurities are removed, you can start washing shoes.

How and how to wash?

Before you start washing white sneakers, you should understand some important points. So, machine wash is contraindicated in the following cases:

• fabric sneakers have damage on the upper part or on the sole;
• products are inexpensive, not 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 spin-off and drying-off options: washing in normal mode for such shoes is strictly prohibited.

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

How to wash in a car?

If there are no contraindications for the machine washing method, it is quite possible to remove the white sneakers in the machine, following this instruction:

1. A suitable detergent is poured into the tray.
2. Set the machine option for delicate washing.
3. Turn off the spin and drying, if any, in this model of the washing machine is provided.
4. Be sure to install an additional rinse.
5. The temperature should not exceed 40 degrees.
6. Before laying in the drum, sneakers are best placed in a special protective bag.

Subject to these conditions, it is safe to lay in the machine even shoes whose top is made of mesh material.

We erase manually

For hand-washing, athletic shoes, after all the same preliminary preparation, are soaked for an hour or two in a solution of the recommended detergent. Then carefully, but gently brush the top of the sneakers with a brush (only a brush with a soft bristle is suitable, it will not damage the fabric) and very carefully rinse out the remnants of the detergent.

What to do with genuine leather?

It is contraindicated for a long time to contact water with natural skin: it warps and coarsens. Therefore, pollution from it must be removed quickly using water for a short time. The sole is washed gently under running water, being careful not to wet the leather parts. To clean them, it is often enough to treat with a thick, saturated foam of laundry soap, which is applied with a sponge.

You can also clean these shoes with a mixture of starch and milk in a ratio of 1: 2. After 15 minutes, wash off the rest of the 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 purity, they should be soaked for about half an hour (or a little longer) in a solution of high-quality oxygen bleach. After that, they are washed with a simple laundry soap and rinsed.

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

To wash the insoles, it is best to use laundry soap. They brush the brush thickly and then intensively treat the surface of each insole with it. Now it remains only to rinse the soap, wait until the excess water drains, and lay out the insoles for drying on a flat surface away from heating appliances (otherwise they become coarse and severely deformed).

How to dry sneakers?

Improper drying can lead to unexpected troubles: shoes become yellow stained, wrinkled, get an unpleasant odor, lose their shape or become roughened and begin to rub their feet.

Proper drying:

1. Products flow for a while in the bathroom.
2. They are filled with dry paper towels, put away from sources of strong heat, and change the paper as it gets wet.

In summer, the shoes will dry faster in the open air in the shade (yellowing may occur from the sun).

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

Incorrect drying:

• Shoes filled with newspapers (they will color the inside of the sneakers, and they will get dirty socks).
• Hot salt was poured inside.
• We inserted an electric dryer in the sneakers.
• Put them on a battery or heater.
• Dried with a hairdryer.
• 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 sports shoes are triple problematic, because they get dirty more often and more intensively than usual. Therefore, acquiring white "sportswomen", one should be prepared for the fact that they will often have to be thoroughly and painstakingly cleaned and washed.