Stinky Climbing Shoes? Try this 99 Cent Solution

You can toss out those dryer sheets. This is your fool-proof, cheap solution for fighting stubborn shoe odor.

The post Stinky Climbing Shoes? Try this 99 Cent Solution appeared first on Climbing.

Back when I was a shiny young buck, I’d often spend upwards of 20 hours a week in the gym, splitting my time projecting routes and boulders, doing four by fours (by fours), and working long circuits, mixing in pull-ups, push-ups, and matt exercises for good measure. The results were mostly positive, but there was one minor problem… my shoes reeked. OK, major problem—my dad, who’d pick me up, started rubbing an orange-scented essential oil underneath his nose in order to fight off the abominable cloud drifting from the back seat. I’m not proud.

Being a self-conscious but also penniless teenager, I scoured the internet for simple, cheap solutions. Freeze your shoes, stated one site. So I popped them in next to our raspberry popsicles and Trader Joe’s taquitos, and my mom was not happy. It didn’t work—the shoes came out crispy, but after defrosting they still stunk. Next, upon a friend’s suggestion, I tried dryer sheets. Those left my shoes with lasting notes of lavender and foot funk (yuck!). Another friend suggested I scrub them using a bit of water and a toothbrush, and that solution helped, but being a teenager who was self-conscious, penniless and adverse to scrubbing, I decided there had to be a better way.  

I returned to the internet and landed on a final tip: baking soda. At the risk of pissing off my mother again, I poured a small handful of the silky white powder into a plastic baggie and then quickly stuffed it into my climbing bag. After the following practice, I sprinkled a quarter-sized pile into each shoe and gave them a quick shake. 

Voila! The following morning, at long last, the smell was gone. 

At just 99 cents a box in most grocery stores, it really doesn’t get better than that. After doing some further research, some sites I encountered cautioned against using baking soda on leather, saying that it could dry it out, but I haven’t experienced that (likely because of profuse sweat!). I did notice that on days when I’d poured too much and then forgot to dump it out prior to climbing, the inside of the shoes felt slippery. I’d recommend always dumping out the excess. 

If you want to take this hack to the next level, try filling chalk socks (or regular socks) with the baking soda and inserting them into the shoes. I’m guessing this would be less messy, although I always just poured directly from the baggie. In any case, you will likely need to reapply the baking soda most days after climbing, but I found it to be less and less necessary over time.

There are tons of shoe deodorizers on the market. Maybe they work—I honestly wouldn’t know. But I do know they’re all more expensive. Baking soda is the way to go if you’re wanting cheap and effective.

Also Read

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• A 5.15c FA, 5.15a redpoint, 5.14 Onsights: Jorge Díaz-Rullo Had a Solid February
• New Sends We Cared About: One of Patagonia’s Hardest Free Routes Gets an FA (and more)

The post Stinky Climbing Shoes? Try this 99 Cent Solution appeared first on Climbing.