Do I need to use shoe trees?
Did you read somewhere that you need to have shoe trees if you want to keep your shoes clean and fresh? Did they explain why you need to use them? If not, I will tell you why!
Shoe trees are shoe caring accessories and they are usually made of wood or sometimes plastic. If you just type “shoe trees” on any e-commerce website, you will get a list of million different types of shoe trees. Shoe trees are often deemed as an essential equipment to own. Let me tell you some reasons why you need to own shoe trees.
1. Shoe trees help to keep your shoes in shape.
Shoe trees are designed to mimic the shape of your feet. They are made to fill your shoes and boots when they are not worn. It is inevitable that your shoes or boots will crease, but using shoe trees will minimise or sometimes get rid of the crease on your shoes. Some people love to have that “Worn” look with their shoes and boots. While others want to keep their shoes and boots looking “New”. It is totally up to you how you want to keep your shoes.
However, it is important to put your shoe trees in your shoes every once in a while, even if you want to have a rugged look on your shoes. The reason being is that often the leather where it creases will not be taken care of and will deteriorate or be damaged by the crease. That is because often creasing can create too much pressure on your leather by flexing too much and when your shoes get wet, the creased area will not dry properly compared with the other part of your shoes.
Using shoe trees will keep some pressure off your shoes and will prolong the life of your shoes.
2. Shoe trees help to keep your shoes clean
If you want to keep your shoes fresher and cleaner you need to have shoe trees that are made of wood. There are different kinds of trees that the shoe trees can be made of. But in particular, I recommend cedar wood. Cedarwood shoe trees have chemicals called thujaplicin inside, this chemical is naturally antibacterial and antifungal. That means if you use shoe trees made of cedarwood, it’ll help to keep your shoes clean to wear.
Wait, why do you need to have antifungal wood in your shoes? That is because your feet sweat a lot. (https://health.ucsd.edu/news/features/pages/2017-02-24-listicle-feet-facts.aspx) According to UC San Diego Health, our feet sweat around half a pint a day. That is a lot of liquid being kept inside of your shoes, especially if you are someone who wears shoes all day long. So, we need a good material that will make your shoes fresher.
So those two are the biggest reason why you need to have shoe trees. When I recommend people to buy shoe trees, these are the most common questions I get.
Do I need to have shoe trees for every pair of shoes I own? – I don’t recommend you buy shoe trees for all the pairs of shoes that you own. That is because if you have a few shoes on rotation, which you should, you can also rotate your shoe trees too. I personally think having one per three pairs of shoes is enough. The reason why you need to rotate your shoes is also to prolong the life of your shoes and keep your shoes fresh.
Which one do I buy? – I know there are a lot of shoe trees in the market. But I normally recommend people to buy cedar wood or if there aren’t any cedar wood shoe trees any wood type shoe trees are also good. I don’t recommend plastic ones.
Also if you want to buy bespoke shoe trees, you can usually only use it on the shoes with the same last. Bespoke shoe trees will exactly match the last the shoes are made with, so it may not fit with other shoes.
There are also boot trees that you have bought, I don’t own any but I would like to have some for my boots in the near future.
