When we come home from an adventure, our shoes and boots get plopped to the side our front vestibule. Great until you greet people at the door with the stench of damp/sweaty/*fill in the gap* shoes smell. I’m not keen on chemical products, many of which also come with a high price tag. So to save the noses of our visitors, I came up with some natural homemade shoe deodoriser. To say that it has made a difference to the entrance of our home is understatement!
Natural homemade shoe deodoriser
There are three main things that you want from a natural homemade shoe deodoriser and they are: 1) that it is antibacterial, 2) that is had a pleasant smell and 3) it works to clear the smell from the shoes. Many commercial products claim to remove the smell, but to my nose, they only mask it for a time. With very hard-working shoes, I had to make sure that my product filled the criteria and also came in cheaper than the regular ones.
My recipe in fact only had two ingredients. Yes, to buy the ingredients from the start it might seem expensive, but you can use them in other ways. They also make a quite a few batches of the natural homemade shoe deodoriser, so you do make a saving in the long run.
Ingredients:
Distilled Witch Hazel
Tea Tree Essential Oil
Equipment:
100 ml Spray Bottle (I bought mine in Boots)
Small funnel
Method:
Fill the bottle to around 95% full with witch hazel, using the funnel to keep everything in place
Drip 40 drops of tea tree essential oil into the bottle
Put the spray top onto the bottle and shake well to combine
Spray into and around the shoes 2-3 times (I do the main opening of the shoe, into the toes and then over the whole shoe. Boots might need one or two more squirts depending on the size)
…and you’re done!
Remember to shake the bottle before each use to make sure that the ingredients are mixed.
Both Witch Hazel and Tea Tree Oil have excellent antiseptic and antibacterial properties, making them an excellent choice for shoes/boots that see a hard life. Not only that, they have a pleasant aroma to them, without that weird chemical sting. Now when we come into our vestibule, it is like our shoes are the welcoming air freshener, not the deterrent!
We have been using the natural homemade shoe deodoriser spray for a few years now and it really does work! So often we would nip into the vestibule to be greeted with a great pong of shoes – it’s one of the reasons we keep them out there now! Not really the greatest way to welcome guests into your home either!
With miles per week in our shoes and boots, we really did need something to keep them fresh and approachable and my homemade natural shoe deodoriser is certainly doing the trick!
How do you like to keep your shoes and boots smelling fresh? Would you make some of my homemade natural shoe deodoriser? Or know of another version I might like to try too?
Let me know in the comments.
