/ 5 min

Fight the Slush and Snow With KURU SHIELD Water-Resistant Spray

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By: KURU Footwear

Key Takeaways

  • Water can cause damage to shoes and it is important to take specific care to dry them out properly.
  • Direct heat, even from the sun, can cause damage to shoes, so it is important to avoid using the dryer and to let them dry at room temperature for 48 hours.
  • Prevention is key to keeping shoes dry and in good condition, and using a water-resistant barrier like KURU SHIELD can help protect shoes from water, stains, and other spills.

Usually, you can tell when it is going to rain. But this time of year, if you live where there is snow you can count on slush. Because of this, getting water in our shoes in nearly unavoidable.

Cold water in your shoes is a shocking and uncomfortable experience for your feet. While the movies might make it seem like they just make funny sounds while wet, it can be very damaging to them.

5 Tips For Drying Out Your Shoes

Shoes need very specific care after they have been even partially immersed in water, cold or not. Let us give you a few tips to dry them out properly:

1. Remove The Insoles

If your insoles are removable, take them out as soon as possible. You can dry the insoles by a vigorous shake, but do not wring them out. This will ruin the padding and severely reduce the life cycle.

The shoe can be shaken to remove excess water as well and you can hang dry it. Direct heat on shoe, even from the sun, can cause the glue or other materials to dry too quickly, expanding and then contracting while cooling and causing brittleness and cracks. This means avoid the dryer as well, even on low heat.

Even direct sunlight can be harsh and damaging to your shoes, let them dry at room temperature for 48 hours for best results.

2. Keep Them Clean

After your insoles are out, clean those shoes well. A good stiff brush with some gentle elbow grease can help you get off mud, dirt or this time of year, salt. Remember salt stains but it also can be very abrasive mineral and possibly destroy the exterior of your shoe with too much abrasion.

Your best hiking shoes can be permanently stained after hiking through just a little bit of mud and then neglecting to clean it off. Make sure to pay special attention to where the leather meets the sole.

If this does not seem to do the trick you can try a mild soapy water solution. Mix it up with just a couple drops of dish detergent to a few cups of water, and make sure to rinse them off well.

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3. Dry Them Out

Time to dry them out. One of the best ways to do that is to stuff them full of newspaper. The ad section does not have the same absorbency as the regular pages, so use the pages with the newsprint on them. Avoid the ones with full-color ads on them, that too can stain the inside as the paper absorbs the water.

The newspaper will not only help keep their form as they dry, but they will help absorb the water and wick it away from the materials in the shoe.

4. Be Patient

This is the hard part: wait. Your shoes can take up to 48 hours to dry out completely. This is another reason to have a spare set of outdoor shoes. Shoes are made of very porous material, which means lots of holes for water to hide in. Your patience will pay off as you let them dry on their own, your shoes will be as good as new, or close to it.

5. Prevention

The last step: Prevention! Once the shoes are completely dry, you can apply a protective solution to them. While you might have a hard time keeping water from running down into your shoe again if you can try to keep it on the outside. Creating a water-resistant barrier will keep water from seeping through and keep your feet warm and dry.

You can do this with KURU SHIELD it is an industrial-strength formula that protects not just against water, but against stains too.

It helps protect all of the materials in your shoes, both leather and meshes alike. A little bit of spray can repel water, oil, juice, wine, and many other common things spilled on shoes.

Move your shoes to a well-ventilated area, probably like the one in which they were drying. Give the can of KURU SHIELD™ a vigorous shake. Then begin coating the shoes from about 12 inches away. You’ll want to do this around bedtime because after treatment you’ll need to wait at least 6 hours to use them again.

Ideally when the season change, you should be re-applying KURU SHIELD. This means every 3 or 4 months. One can of KURU SHIELD will last for 5 treatments of a single pair of shoes.

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