Cleaning shoes with acetone

September 19th, 2007

If your have marks on light coloured leather or patent shoes, try cleaning them with acetone (nail polish remover). Soak a piece of cotton wool in the acetone and rub it over the mark. I haven’t found a need to be gentle with my patent shoes, but am a dash more careful with soft leather (I haven’t tried this with metallic leather).

This method works wonders. The colour of the shoe somehow remains intact, and in most cases the marks either disappear or are substantially reduced. It’s particularly effective for removing dark blue stains that end up on the top, or at the back of your shoes after wearing dark blue wash jeans. My yellow and cream patent heels continue to look new because of this easy trick.



6 Replies

Posted on Wednesday, September 19th, 2007 at 7:31 am
Jennifer

Huh! :) Great tip!

Posted on September 19th, 2007 at 8:53 am

I found that the Mr Clean magic eraser is great for getting scuff marks off shoes as well.

Posted on September 19th, 2007 at 10:05 am

Unfortunately, I found out a couple months ago that it doesn’t work so well with non-acetone nail polish remover. That did take some of the color off a pair of white shoes that I have. Fortunately, I should be able to fix it with polish or, if that doesn’t work, a refinishing job. I had my other pair of white shoes refinished. I just got them back and they are good as new.

Posted on September 19th, 2007 at 4:17 pm
Posted on September 21st, 2007 at 10:02 am

I was somewhat successful with the nail polish remover taking off marks. It definitely FADED the mark, but did not compeltely remove it.

Posted on September 27th, 2007 at 5:25 am

i just got back to my old nike dunks that i had for about almost a year now and then i removed the laces and saw the dirt marks made by the spaces left between the laces and i was like omg those are so ugly. being the sneaker freak that i am i went and tried to clean them with stuff. i usually go with toothpaste as my first pick because it usually removes all scuffs right off but then it failed in this case. so then i tried all other kinda substances that i thought could remove it from bleach to tide to windex to spray and wash to soup to shampoo and nothing seemed to work. then i saw my moms nail supplies and i glanced at the bottle of acetone and decided to try it. so i did and everything went right off i was so amazed just a couple of hard rubs and scrubs and all the stains where off in less then 2 minutes. My shoes are as clean as new and i love them just the crack marks on the leather from walking in them still exist.

Posted on November 26th, 2007 at 8:58 pm

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