Introduction

Hello, welcome back to the channel and episode 4 of my Weekly Wedge series. Now with the winter just about behind us and the spring just around the corner, my attention has been turning to getting my equipment ready for the season ahead. And one thing that I have neglected over the winter period are my golf shoes. Now, I’ve got to be honest, I haven’t cleaned them during the entire period and they’re looking like a little bit of a sorry state. So I thought, seeing as I’d be doing it anyway, why not take you through the process and show you the product that I use to get my old golf shoes looking almost as good as new. So, as you can see, these FootJoy Packards are looking a little bit dirty—it’s time to get them clean.

Equipment Needed

Now, before we jump in and clean the golf shoe, let’s quickly talk about the equipment that you’ll need for this particular task. Everything that I’m going to use in this video I have in front of me here and I also have direct links to all of these products in the description below, so if you are interested in using any of these products and you maybe don’t have them in your house, feel free to use those links. So, first of all, I have my golf shoes. Now, in this video I’m just going to clean one of them just to save a little bit of time, but this one has been worn during the winter period and is fairly dirty. I have a standard sponge from the kitchen. We have a little tub here of hot water. I’ve got a two-pack of really cheap toothbrushes; if you’ve got an old toothbrush lying about you could use that. Don’t go buy an expensive brushes for this dirty job though, just these cheap ones are fine. I have a pack of baby wipes; if you’ve got multi-surface wipes you can use those as well. And I also have a little tub of this Kiwi Whitener. So this is perfect for just finishing your shoes off if of course they are white—it’s kind of like a polish if you like. And then finally, I have this, now this is the Pink Stuff cleaning paste. This is what I use for cleaning my golf shoes. I find this really, really good at getting into all of those little nooks and crannies and working on tough stains or mud which is really baked into my shoes.

Abrasive Warning

A little word of warning about this stuff though: it is an abrasive cleaning material, so I tend to use this if I have an older pair of shoes. These FootJoys, for example, are around about two and a half years old and they’re pretty heavily worn and battered and bruised, so it brings these up and makes them look really, really good. Obviously they’re not going to look like new, but I would be a little bit conscious of the fact that this is abrasive and if you’re maybe trying to clean brand new golf shoes, personally I would probably lean towards the solution that is recommended by the manufacturer. So in this case, FootJoy actually sell their own cleaning materials and I’ll put a link to those in the description below. If you’ve got a new pair, you might want to work with those solutions, especially if they have softer leather like these ones. But if your golf shoe, like mine, is really quite old then this stuff is considerably cheaper and works really, really well and will make this shoe not look like new but it’ll make it look 10 times better. And then finally inside you’ll see we have this microfiber cloth. This is just used for wiping the shoe at the end. Doesn’t need to be a microfiber one, they’re just a little bit easier to dry out. So now that we’ve covered all of the equipment that we need, let’s start with the first part of the process.

Step 1: Remove the Laces

Now the first thing that we will need to do with our golf shoe is remove the laces. Now you’re welcome to obviously clean with the laces in, but I think it makes it easier and makes more sense to remove them. A word of warning though, before you remove your laces, just check that these little plastic tabs are still on the ends of the laces, because in particular on FootJoy with really small holes like these ones, once you take the laces out if they have frayed it can be a nightmare trying to get the laces back in. So I just usually double check and make sure that the plastic ends are on the laces. In this case they are, so I’m going to now remove the laces from the shoes.

Step 2: Remove Loose Mud with Water and Wipes

Now that we have removed the laces, it’s time to remove some of the mud from the shoe. Now, rather than going straight in with the cleaning paste, what I like to do is to use hot water and my sponge just to lift the bulk of this kind of mud that we see here, the easy-to-access and easy-to-remove mud. I’m not going to worry about the sole and I’ve just given them a little bang in the garden, but I’m fine with the sole being like that. But we will work into this area all the way around here. So first of all, I’m going to just grab an extra towel because there will be a little bit of water coming here, so just put an old towel down. And then what we’re going to do is we’re basically just going to use hot water to remove this mud. So I’ll get my little tub of hot water and I’ll get my sponge, and I’m just going to basically wet the mud and remove it as best as I can. So again, it’s not really going to give the shoe a massive cleanup, that’s what the paste is for, but it’s at least going to get it clean enough to start with. So just try and get into all of these little bits and remove as much as you can just using hot water. Now that I’ve removed most of the looser dirt, I’m just going to take my baby wipes here, and I find that just these are a little bit easier to kind of give it a final clean. So I’m just working now into these little gaps here with the baby wipe. Again, it’s not going to remove all of the mud, but it’s at least going to give me a cleaner surface to work with on the paste and I find these are a little bit easier sometimes to get into these little gaps. So just work around the shoe with your baby wipes and then when you’re finished, you hopefully will have a shoe that will look something like this. So we’ve removed the kind of loose dirt at this stage.

Step 3: Apply the Cleaning Paste

So by now we have removed most of the loose dirt from the shoe. It’s time to now work the paste into the shoe. So I’ll grab my tub of The Pink Stuff and you’ll see it’s a 500g tub and I’ve been using it for a quite a long time now and I’ve only used a very, very small amount. So I’m just going to take my sponge from earlier and I’m just going to work on a fairly generous amount here onto the sponge. I’m actually choosing not to use the abrasive surface of the sponge because sometimes that can maybe damage the leather a little bit more than just using the softer side. The cleaning solution should do enough itself anyway. But all I’m doing is I’m basically just working it into the leather. So I’m just going to run around the shoe and I’m just working in sort of circular motions here to try and get it in. We can then use a toothbrush later on if we want to, to get into any of the nooks and crannies, but you’ll see generally we’re just giving the paste a good bit of coverage around the shoe. So we’ll work in the front of the shoe just now and then I’m just working in that circular motion into any little areas including the back and the little eyelets until I have hopefully removed most of the dirt. Now also don’t forget about the tongue, so the tongue can sometimes be the forgotten part of the shoe when you’re cleaning because the laces cover it, but I like to just give that a little bit of coverage as well. I’m going to keep working over the shoe now.

Step 4: Scrub with a Toothbrush

Once I have worked a lot of the cleaning solution in, I’ll usually just get a little bit more hot water and another sponge and I’ll just give it a good kind of wiping over, just looking to remove most of the cleaning paste that we’ve worked in, and then that lets you see how well it has worked. Now if you feel like it’s not quite getting there, what you could consider using is the abrasive part of the sponge, but alternatively you could go for your toothbrush. So if I just put a little bit of the solution onto the toothbrush, I’m now going to work into these little areas here and this will allow me to remove any of the dirt from the bits that are quite hard to get to with the sponge. So you see I’m just working around into those little gaps. At this point I might want to work into the stitching as well. And then there may be little bits here, so you can see the creases here where the leather has actually split, so this might be a little bit trickier to clean up, but I’m just gently working into this with the toothbrush into these areas. So instead of using that sort of rough part of the sponge, I think even just going with the toothbrush and just being a little bit gentler will hopefully be better for that leather because of course we still want them to look good even though they are old. So this is where the toothbrush is quite good for just getting into the stitching at the back of the shoe which can be quite hard to get into with a sponge.

Step 5: Wipe and Dry

So now that we’ve added more of the paste, I’m just now going to use a wipe to basically wipe over the shoe. So I’m getting into all of the little gaps and trying to remove as much of that paste as possible just using a standard baby wipe. You can go back to your hot soapy water with a sponge at this point if you want, but we’re just going to remove most of that and you’ll see here on the back we can already see the difference in terms of the amount of mud we’ve removed from the shoe and it has really managed to work into those little textured patterns within the leather to remove that dirt. Hopefully you are enjoying this video so far, but one thing I’m curious to know is whether or not you use the same method and products to clean your golf shoes or if you have a completely different way of doing so. Please let me know in the comments area below and if you’re enjoying this video, be sure to hit that like button and if you haven’t already done so, please do consider subscribing to support the channel. Anyway, let’s get back to the cleaning process.

So now that we’ve given the shoe a wipe with the wet wipes just to remove the last of the paste, I’m just going to give it a final little drying off using my microfiber cloth. So I’m just really working into all of those areas to try and basically dry the shoe off as best as I can before we add in our little bit of Whitener just to finish them off. So going to give them a good drying off. Of course, at this stage if you notice any bits that maybe you think could do with a bit more work then you can go back and add maybe a little bit more cleaner, but I’m happy enough with these. As I said, you’re not going to be able to turn them into brand new shoes, but they will look a lot better than they did at the beginning.

Step 6: Apply Whitener

Okay, so the last thing to do is take your Whitener. I usually just give it a little shake and then I’m basically just going to apply it to the shoe. So I find this a little bit easier to put my hand inside and I push my fingers down which raises the shoe up and then I’m basically just working it in to all of the areas that I can. So this stuff isn’t perfect, but I think sometimes it just gives a little bit of a nice coating, especially areas like this where the leather’s kind of breaking out a little bit. It’s not going to fully cover it, you’ll see there’s a little kind of yellowing to the shoe there, but I like to just put it a little bit on just to finish them off. Last thing I’m going to do is just take a wipe and I’m just going to gently wipe around where I might have got some of the Whitener into here. I’m just going to remove that using a wipe.

Conclusion

So there you have it, that’s my quick, easy, and cost-effective method of cleaning my golf shoes, and I’m sure you agree that these Packards are looking considerably better now than they did at the beginning of this video. If you have missed any of the episodes from this series so far, you can find the playlist in the description below or on screen just now. And if you’re curious to know if I have a similar quick method of cleaning my golf clubs, well I do, and I’ve got this video here that you might find useful. But thanks again for watching and I’ll see you in next week’s video.