The Care & Keeping of Rain Boots

Here are some handy yet sassy tips on how to take care of your new, fashionable footwear to help ensure they provide good puddle stomping for seasons to come.

As with all things, rain boots have friends and enemies, allies and adversaries. And they are....(drum roll please)....

Enemies to the rain boot:
1. Sunlight
2. Heat
3. Salt(water)
4. Mud

Rubber and sun, heat, salt and mud just don’t mix. Can you say oil and water? Pickles and ice cream (unless you are pregnant apparently)? Democrats and Republicans? Hillary and Obama? Okay then, you get the picture.

If you want your boots to dry out, crack and crumble then by all means leave them sitting in the hot sun after wading in salt water and mucking through a muddy swamp. Then be sure to store them right next to your heater, fireplace or in your 150 degree attic. That is sure to make them dry, brittle and pretty much useless. Imagine how sad you will be come next winter when you put on those boots and they crumble right off your feet. That actually happened to me this past winter so I know from experience. Good thing I have an all-access pass to rain boots galore. (But my new boots will not succumb to their enemies this year!!)



Which leads us to:


Friends of the rain boot:
1. Cool, dry and dark places (when not being used of course)
2. A nice little 'shower' if boots are muddy or have been in salt water

A little rubber boot TLC is all that is needed to keep your Puddle Stompers in fine form. Rinse your boots off with warm water and a little mild soap if you have been in saltwater, mucking out horse stalls or visiting Shrek in his muddy swamp. Then hang upside down to dry in a cool location.


While poking about online, I also found a rubber conditioner by LaCrosse that claims to restore moisture to the rubber, keep the color from fading and minimize the damage to the rubber caused by UV rays.

I am looking into whether this can be used on the boots we carry that have the patterns layered on the surface of the boots as I want to make sure the pattern won’t peel off if this conditioner is applied to the boots. To this end, I am running a little experiment, heretofore referred to as Operation Experimentation, with the rubber conditioner and a pair of our most popular boots, Chooka's Black Tattoo City rain boots, shown above. I will keep you appraised of the process and progress of said boots. Hopefully we will be able to add yet another friend to the list above once this experiment is complete.

So, 'nuf said for now.

Check in for installment # 1 of Operation Experimentation later this week.

Bloggin off for now.