Smelly Shoe Solution

I have a teenage boy with very smelly feet in my house. His feet are so smelly that it is considered a form of torture to be shut in a room with his shoes. We tried powders, sprays, deodorants, and Lysol to no effect. Those trials resulted in smelly shoes that had a hint of citrus (or whatever smell the spray had). So after some internet research by my dad and I, we have found a solution that I think really works.

The combined problems that we are combating are moisture from sweat, which then breeds bacteria, which causes the smell. So to combat the problem we have to decrease moisture and kill the bacteria.

So, for problem #1, Moisture;

The solution for the moisture problem is multi-pronged, and it works best if you make sure you do all of the steps. The first step that we needed to implement is to rotate the wearing of shoes in order to let the recently used shoes dry out for 24 hours. Even better than just letting them dry out on their own is putting a Charcoal shoe inserts into them while they are drying. The shoe inserts really make a huge difference. Then of course you must wear clean dry socks each day.

Now problem #2, Bacteria;

To combat the bacteria problem, washing feet is considered a very important step. Then on top of washing your feet, or between washing, we have been using hand sanitizer on my son’s feet. This really has made a difference in killing the smell causing bacteria.

One other thing that we have just implemented is placing a drop of essential oil onto a cotton ball and placing that inside the shoe at times. I use either Protector, or a basic smell like lemon. The essential oil changes the whole smell dynamic, and rather than just being a cover up smell, it actually removes and replaces the bad shoe smell.