Are you taking care of your business?

Ladies and the occasional gentleman, are you taking care of your stuff? I’ve noticed that most of my shopping is centered around new pieces, as opposed to replacing stuff I already have – which makes it, for the most part, optional. With the exception of workout shoes, most of your things can be fixed or can benefit from preventative maintenance. Here are a few of my favorite tips:

Shoes

Please, please find and familiarize yourself with a local shoe repair person. Even if you live in a small town you should be able to find one – if googling or the yellow pages fail you, ask your dry cleaner (or someone else’s dry cleaner, if you do not normally partake of said services). This person is invaluable to you, or at least to me. Even though I have a TON of these pointy little lust objects, I have a few specific pairs that I wear most often at work. In general they are comfier, the right hight, work appropriate, matching my work clothes. But if you are rotating 2-6 pairs of shoes daily for work they are going to wear down at the heel and the toe. For me, usually the heel first, but the toe goes as well. If you ignore it and let it go on for too long it is less easy to fix and starts eating into the shoe as well. If you wear your heel down to the little metal bit you’ll notice that you are wearing down the leather part of the heel, past where the heel rubber used to be. And it makes this awful noise when you walk.

So what do you do? Freaking fix it, my friends! Never done this before? It costs, get this, approximately $6 to get new heel caps on your shoes. Yep, that’s it. Six dollars. Your shoe is as good as new, you click instead of clack, and you don’t have to tempt fate by going to Zappos, which will suck your money and your soul faster than I can suck a chocolate shake. Same thing with the toe; it’s approximately $10-12 and it looks and feels so nice. You shouldn’t have to do this more than once a year for any given pair of shoes, but if you do, it usually means you are wearing the hell out of them and it’s even more worth it. While you are there, ask them to polish your shoes if you have a few extra dollars.

What if the leather gets scratched? I say leather but realize it may be ‘leather’. If it is scratched or scraped and you can see under the top layer, use shoe polish to cover it up (obvs, only do this if you can find amatching color). As a last resort, you could use a pen or a marker but only if we are talking about a REAL color match, like black or brown.

Everyday care:

• To keep your shoes fresh, you can put baking soda in a sachet and store inside your shoe to absorb odor.
• Men use shoe trees to help their shoes keep their shape. They make smaller shoe trees and if your shoes have a tendency to get a funky shape, look into this – it will really help the longevity of your shoe.
• WEAR STOCKINGS. I suck at this, but seriously, it makes a huge deal for how long the insides of your shoes will hold up well – especially if they are not actually leather
• Which leads me to – buy leather when you can. Srsly. Unless you are against using animal products, which I totally respect.
• Even if you don’t care about the shoe tree shaper, be CAREFUL how you store your shoes. I live in an apartment and have more stuff than space, so I have this shoe thing that goes on my closet door and has little pockets to put the shoes in. This only works if it won’t smush the shoe, or of the shoe won’t hang over the pocket – if it does, the shoe will BEND. This leads to shape issues, then your shoes develop self-image problems, and it’s a whole big thing.
• If you can, when buying your shoes, buy them at Nordstrom. Why? Free repairs. True story.

Here is another thing: If you lose weight you may notice your feet fit a bit more loosely in your shoes. Less pressure on the feet, less swelling, and actual weight loss in the foot. This has happened to me. You do NOT NEED to buy new shoes. Even though your shoes are loose you do not need to replace them – instead, buy shoe pads! Go to a shoe store and buy these little shoe inserts, they run approximately $5 for a little package of them and it can really take up the slack in the shoe. This also works if someone with a slightly larger foot borrows it and stretches it out.

Bonus round – here are a few more tips for keeping your lovely things lovely without having to replace them:

• If you have a matched set, such as a suit jacket and pants, do not wear them unequally. Yes it is fun to mix and match them as separates, but don’t use one piece more than the other.  Almost any item of clothing fades over time from wear and cleaning and if you wear the jacket more than the pants or vice versa, they will be entirely different shades of the same color after a year.
• Instead of dry cleaning your slacks or sweaters, the Dry Cleaner’s Secret dryer cloths really work wonders. Throw your dry clean items into the dryer with one of these sheets and 30 mins later, your clothes are clean. You may need to iron (I don’t) or lintroll or whatever, but it’s worth it and saves a ton of money.
• Buy a sweater de-piller or de-fuzzer
• Do not put your wallet, cellphone, etc into the same pocket over and over. Same thing with loose change or anything heavy that will pull at or distort your clothes. If there is a man around you, look at one of his butt pockets – permanent imprint from his wallet. Don’t let this be you!
• If you rip or tear your clothes, a tailor will repair for a low price, usually less expensive than an alteration.
• If you have kids, strip them down (at home) before they eat. It’s amazing what kids can do to clothes
• Lounge around in lounging clothes, not your nice spendy clothes. If you are having company over, invest in an apron or do the messiest prep ahead of time in more casual clothes and do a quick change when guests arrive.

If you have any more tips on how to keep your bidness fresh, please share in the comments! I know there are things I may have left out. Most of us do one or more of the above already but hopefully something here will help one of you fabulous people out there save some dollars!