This Free Hack Was a Total Game-Changer to Dry My Machine-Washed Shoes

I have a confession: I coordinated three years of sneaker trials for a sister magazine of Better Homes & Gardens, and in the process learned all of the best practices for shoe care along the way. Despite that intel, and despite the fact that everyone from appliance brands like Maytag to footwear companies like Nike advise against it, I sometimes toss my shoes in the dryer. 

The Wrong Way to Dry Shoes 

Yes, I know that the heat of a dryer is said to cause shoes to potentially shrink and the glue to get too hot and come loose. But if I clean my canvas shoes or sneakers in the washer and allow them to dry for a full day, sometimes they still leave me with wet feet. Some of our best dryer picks come with handy drying racks that lock into place in the center of the drum, but as the third or fourth renter of my unit, any rack that came with my dryer has gone MIA.

So sometimes, when I’m desperately seeking the pair of shoes to wear with a particular outfit, I have carelessly tossed wet shoes into the drum and pretended like I didn’t hear the “thud-thud-thud” echoing across my townhome. It’s probably not the wisest move for the longevity of the shoes—or the dryer.

The Right Way to Dry Shoes

After spending a week traipsing through vineyards in my once-white Converse Chuck Taylors, I was passing time in the airport. In what felt like a moment of kismet, I was scrolling through social media waiting for our boarding call, and came across a TikTok trick that practically had me sprinting to the laundry room when I arrived home. (Hey, my curious streak runs deep! Plus, I had “research” to do.) 

Janitor and self-proclaimed “clean freak” Brandon Pleshek (aka cleanthatup) explains how it’s done in his buzzy TikTok tutorial.

“Here’s a quiet and easy way to dry your shoes. Tie your shoe strings in a knot, and close them in the drawer of the dryer,” he says in his video. “Make sure the knots stay on the outside. That way, the shoes won’t move around. Dry on a low- to no-heat setting. They’re dry, and it doesn’t sound like a stampede is running though your house.”

One viewer admitted, “Genius! Mine always fly out. 😂😂,” referring to the fact that her clattering shoes would hit the door and pop it open. There’s zero risk for that here. I followed Pleshek’s lead, tying a knot on the laces near their furthest point from the shoes, locking the separate shoes together. Then, I set my dryer to delicate (low), carefully closed the door so the knot would stay around the center middle of the door, and pressed “start.” After one cycle on low heat, my now almost-just-like-new Converse shoes were fully dry and ready to wear.

“This was probably the most useful thing I’ve learned on TikTok,” another fan said after watching. It certainly ranks right up there with cottage cheese ice cream and the garbage bag trick for me. Any time I’m crunched for time and in need of dry shoes stat, I’ll be turning to this cleaning hack.

Alternative Ways to Dry Shoes Safely

If you’d rather not risk running your sneakers through a shift in the dryer, no matter if it’s a silent, clunk-free process, you have a few other options to dry your shoes, 

• Allow them to air-dry in a well-ventilated place that receives direct sunlight inside.
• On mild to warm precipitation-free days, place them in the sun outside to speed up drying a bit more.
• Stuff the inside of wet shoes with balled-up pieces of newspaper. Since the material is very absorbent, it can potentially reduce required dry time. If your shoes start out very wet, replace the sheets every hour or so to ensure they don’t start fostering mildew.
• Invest in a shoe dryer; we love the stand-up models, especially to play double-duty as a boot-dryer during snow shoveling season. 

Now that I have that confession off my chest, and have five reliable solutions to dry my shoes more safely, I’m off to study up on what other cleaning mistakes I might be making…