‘This easy hack can get your white shoes sparkly clean in no time!’ the headline screamed. Looking at the photos in the article, the final product indeed looks as if they were newly bought.
I’m very cynical, as one would be if they have ever tried washing their kid’s school shoes in hopes of getting them to look white again.
Bending over double in the toilet, scrubbing and toiling, takes too much out of this auntie’s back. So I usually throw them in the washer instead. I wouldn’t recommend this method though — while it gets the job done, the machine also breaks some of the threads in the shoes.
Hence, I’m curious to see if this cleaning hack, which just has two steps, will hack it.
Dirty white shoes before washing. | Image source: AsiaOne/ Kwok Kar Peng
First, scrub the shoes with dishwashing liquid — not laundry detergent as most of us do — and rinse off as usual.
Next, place toilet or tissue paper all over the wet shoes and you’re done. All that’s left is to leave them out to dry.
The results
So follow the instructions I did — I scrubbed, rinsed, and mummified the shoes.
And did it work? Did my Ah Boy’s shoes finally look decent?
I think they looked a little bit cleaner — it had to be given the backbreaking work I put into it.
Though I’m not sure if dishwashing liquid is any better than laundry detergent, I’m half-convinced this is a worthy hack because of what I saw on the toilet paper.
See the yellow dirt marks on the toilet paper? | Image source: AsiaOne/ Kwok Kar Peng
As the shoes were drying, dirty yellow ‘lines’ and spots appeared on the paper it was wrapped in. And I assume that this was the dirt from the shoes being absorbed into the paper.
While the shoes were nowhere near “sparkly clean” as the headline promised, the paper hack seems useful enough.
I think I’ll be mummifying all my white shoes every time I wash them now, because every little bit helps, right?
Washed but not that much whiter. | Image source: AsiaOne/ Kwok Kar Peng
This article was first published in AsiaOne and republished on theAsianparent with permission.
Lead image source: AsiaOne
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