Quick Tip: Newsprint for drying shoes

After our icy and multiple stream crossings, our shoes ended up being a muddy, wet mess.

At home, we sorted and hung our gear to dry on our trusty drying rack, put on our equally useful small space heater with an oscillating fan in the gear room, and let time and dryness work its wonders.

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I thought we lived in the desert??? 😉 Our collective gear on the dry cycle. #reddirtismud #moab #utah

A post shared by Paul Mags (@pmagsco) on Oct 7, 2018 at 4:22pm PDT

But one item needed a little extra TLC. Our shoes! After a weekend of creek crossings, snow, ice, and mud, they were a sloppy mess.

We cleaned them a bit, put them out in our gear room, and did a trick Joan is especially fond of: Using newspaper stuffed in the shoe to soak up the moisture and then swapping out as needed.

That’s it. Be sure to remove the insoles. And if your shoes tie up a bit tighter than Joan’s Keens, perhaps untie the shoelaces a bit.

In particularly humid areas, wrapping the shoes with newspaper and a rubber band would be very utilitarian, too.

Since it is the 21st century, and newspaper readership is down, “newsprint” is perhaps a more apt term. Grab some flyers from your junk mail, or perhaps you can use a local weekly or the newsprint at the local grocery store. The result is the same. Meaning, your shoes dry quicker, your gear is cared for, and will last longer.

Simple. Easy. Cheap. Effective.