Clothing > TipsMay 17, 2010

I love to garden and, more often than not, I ruin my shoes when I'm immersed in black dirt. I constantly go outside to garden. Sometimes I'll actually remember to slip on my plastic garden shoes, but if I need to really dig, they are too flimsy to really allow me to get any muscle behind my jump and shove shovel maneuvers when I'm transplanting and digging a big hole. Often I even forget to change my shoes and that's when shoe travesties takes place. More often than not my "best" new tennis shoes are no longer my "best" tennis shoes once I spend an entire day gardening in them.

One day I went to a garage sale and purchased a nice leather pair of Born brand shoes in my size for $2.00. I found they were way too clunky for work. Then on a random day when I happened to have them on in the yard, I began to garden and realized these shoes were optimal for gardening! I could plod around in the dirt and even get accidentally severed worms on them and it didn't matter. Plus, these shoes were strong and durable, especially in the toe area, and proved to be the best gardening shoes I ever used.

Now whenever I go to garage sales I look for heavy duty shoes or boots that somebody is getting rid of and just like that I have new gardening shoes. I love to re-use! I wear socks and give the shoes a nice hefty spray of disinfectant just in case there's any concerns about the condition of the former shoe owner's feet. The best thing is that I NEVER have to worry about wrecking my shoes - I don't care what happens to them because there are more used shoes out there just waiting to be re-purposed!

By Jeanasina from Richfield, MN

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• Disinfect Secondhand Shoes
• Go Barefoot Whenever Possible
• Finding Comfortable Shoes

• Making Shoes Narrower
• Secondhand but Not Second-Rate
• Shoe Polish Instead of Replacing Shoes