Several years ago, as I was wandering around our mall (back when we wandered among other humans) I saw a vendor in the middle of the walkway, selling the oddest shoes I had ever seen. They looked like rubbery plastic clogs. I remember mentioning them to my mom and she was like, “Oh yeah, Mario Batali wears those.” Who? So as you can see, I was really not up on fashion or Food Network chefs. Over the next few years, Crocs became more and more common but it never occurred to me to purchase them because they were the stupidest looking shoes I had ever seen.
Years later, after I had begun my reselling journey, I started seeing all kinds of Crocs that didn’t look like the ugly, rubbery plastic clogs. I had picked up a couple of different looking pairs and was surprised and delighted by how quickly they sold and that they turned a decent profit. I even bought a couple of pairs of Crocs myself. Well, the truth is that I LIVE in my Crocs all summer.
Now I rarely pass up a pair of Crocs when I am sourcing. As I am mostly sourcing at our Goodwill Outlet these days, AKA ‘the Bins’, I pay $1.39 a pound for them and as we all know, they don’t weigh much. The main determining factor is the bottom tread. Of course, some of these shoes are beyond salvaging…
Here is a pair that I picked up last week. They cost me roughly 80 cents. I thought they were cute. In my defense, it was early morning and kinda dark in the Goodwill Outlet. We are given a two-hour time limit, due to Covid-19 protocols (they are limited to 40 shoppers at a time) so I must confess that I didn’t give them quite the going over I might have in the past. They will serve as an example of how easy it is to restore them to shiny again.
Here they are before I cleaned and treated them. Notice that they have PAINT on them. What was I thinking?
Well loved shoes. Kinda yucky
Paint on the bottoms of the shoes.
The first step is to soak them in my sink in warm water and baking soda. I then sprayed them with a bit of Dawn dish spray and poured some baking soda directly on them. The baking soda acts as a cleanser of sorts and works magic at getting scum and okay, paint, off of Crocs.
Soak shoes in warm water and baking soda.
In the next step, I use a Magic Eraser to scrub the sides (this works great on white Crocbands) and get whatever discoloration the baking soda missed. I cut my magic erasers into smaller pieces and use one piece per pair of shoes.
Next step, magic eraser.
Finally, I use Crocs Shine polish to make the shoes shiny again. I purchase this directly from the Crocs website and it is a game changer. It really does bring Crocs back to life. It also works wonders on other rubber-based shoes. I may start buying it in bulk.
Final step is Crocs Shine
Here is the finished product. As you can see, they look much better on top, but there is still some paint left on the soles of the shoes and far more tread wear than I had noticed.
Much cleaner and prettier shoes.
Still a bit of paint on the bottoms and more tread wear then I like.
Hmm… to list or not to list…
I normally list everything fixed price/buy it now but after considering tossing them into the ‘redonate’ pile, I listed these shoes as an auction with a starting bid at $2.99 + shipping. We’ll see what happens. As of this moment, I have four watchers on them. If they were my size, I certainly would have kept them and worn them.
I will let you know what happens.
