Five Inexpensive Ways to Protect Your Leather Shoes

After you have made the investment in leather shoes (no matter what you have paid for them) it is important to extend the life of the shoes and maintain their appearance. Especially if you have made a significant investment in shoes that you absolutely love.

The following tips given by the experts are designed to add years to the life of your shoes. They are low-cost investments to ensure you will be able to continue creating amazing styles with your favorite shoes.

Add toe taps

Hands down, the professionals advise to take your new heels (if they are pointed at the toe) in to a shoe repair specialist to have toe taps added before the heels are worn. In my opinion, skip the metal kind. I feel they are far too noisy. However, consider how much we walk and the way in which our toes hit the pavement, ground etc. The toe or tips of our shoes have the ability to wear easily. The toe tap will help ensure the tips of the sole do not prematurely wear or obtain damage.

Protect and pre-treat your shoes

Whether your new investment is made of leather or suede, it is so important to immediately have them professionally treated or treat them yourself with weatherproof repellent. The repellent should be one that uses nanotechnology or provides an invisible shield without interfering with the shoes' ability to breathe.

• Keep in mind, even though your shoes are treated or protected, if they get wet they need to be dried immediately away from direct heat.
• The repellent does not last indefinitely; you will need to treat your shoes every few weeks
• If you stain the shoes, spot clean them as soon as you can with a soft cloth or brush. Clean the shoes with cleaner formulated specifically for leather or suede.

Replace heel caps

When we love our shoes we wear our shoes! Inevitably the heel caps will wear rather quickly as a result. It is important to be proactive about having the heel caps replaced on shoes before the nail head becomes exposed. If it comes to the point the nail head is getting exposed, you run the risk of damaging the shoe past the point the heel cap can be replaced (by some professionals). The deeper the nail is driven into the heel of the shoe the harder it is to remove. I have personally experienced this, resulting in the loss of some of my most beloved summer heels.

Properly store your shoes

If space prohibits you from holding on to your shoe boxes (face it, that is the case for many of us), most shoes comes with shoe bags now. In order to prevent your shoes from becoming scratched, getting dusty or becoming misshapen and cracked it is important shoes are properly stored. An investment in cedar shoe trees is highly recommended by shoe experts and repair professionals. One pair is all that is required.

The cedar shoe tree helps our shoes absorb moisture and maintain their shape. After wearing our shoes we should insert the trees for 24 hours and allow them to properly dry (from any mild perspiration) and hold their shape. Which leads me to the final recommendation from the experts...

Rotate your shoes

We all have our favorite pair or two of heels, however without fail, every expert recommends we do not repeat the same pair of shoes every day. We have to give the shoes time to breathe and we have to let them dry properly. Whether we like it or not, shoes retain a bit of moisture. Our goal is to preserve them and rotating them is one important way to achieve that goal.