Trade Secret: Kiwi Leather Lotion

As anyone who knows me well can tell you, it turns out that since sometime in middle school, I have always had a lot of shoes. After graduating college, this habit unfortunately got worse rather than better. My closet is full, as well as a large shelving unit in my room. At some time though, I realized that I cant wear basketball shoes every day of my life, and because of this work thing that gets in the way of me playing basketball, I do have to own some dress shoes. My initial approach was to spend very little on dress shoes, as to have more money to burn on basketball shoes; a poor decision. Cheap shoes fall apart quickly, look very cheap, and are very rarely actually comfortable.

In an effort to be a grown-up, I decided to actually invest in some nice leather shoes that I expect to last me longer than 3 months. Part of the ownership of this type of shoe, is caring for it. The product that I have recently found to help me do that is Kiwi’s Leather Lotion. (No my blog isnt turning into a commercial, I just was motivated to write about this after using it.) Kiwi’s Leather Lotion can be applied to any color leather shoes (I probably wouldnt put it on white) and is used to give the leather that healthy glow, allowing it to last longer, and continue to repel water. I purchased the leather lotion only after thinking I had completely ruined my shoes by wearing them in a recent New York City downpoor. Covered in dirty water, street salt, and who knows what, they didnt exactly look that great. After cleaning them off, and applying some of the Kiwi leather lotion however, I was able to revive the shoes to their original condition….and frankly the leather looks better now than it did upon original purchase.

I would probably suggest using the leather lotion in combination with mink oil or another type of water repellent that can be used on shoes. That said, I would shoot for “lotion-ing” them once a month with typical wear patterns. The lotion helps to reduce leather cracking and dryness, and also helps to prevent creasing in the shoes from normal wear. I purchased my bottle at Target for $4.99 I believe; definitely worth checking out.