How frustrating is it when you get a really good, expensive pair of running shoes
and start to see it developing a hole in the toe box? Does this look familiar?
I’m someone whose always been prone to that and today I’m going to show you a cheap solution on
how to prevent holes in your shoes, particularly those from your big toe. Now you could also try
using it to also help you from developing holes in other areas of the shoe, but in this video
I’ll focus on holes caused by the big toe. But first of all, I want to welcome you to
How To with Kevin, and of course, I’m Kevin and like all of you out there, things come up and we
have to deal with them. So I made this channel to share some of the things I’ve either learned or
figured out to either make things easier or save a lot of money and hopefully you find it helpful.
So, anyways back to the problem at hand, I have always had issues with getting holes in my shoes
caused by my big toes, particularly with so many walking and running shoes using mesh at
the toe box. And I’ve tried everything that’s supposed to help, trimming my nails shorter,
wearing thicker socks, and even tried wearing slightly bigger or even smaller shoes,
none of it helped. So anyways, about 15 or 20 years ago, probably when I first started to wear
more expensive shoes, I thought about what I could to prevent getting these holes in the toe box.
Now to give just a little background on how I came up with this, I’m a doctor in
occupational therapy and at that time, I was working in a clinic with mostly older people.
And one of the things that happens to people as we get older is that our skin becomes more fragile,
and because of that we’re more likely to have problems like blisters or sores when your skin has
constant pressure on it. So we had a product that we used to help prevent that for our patients,
where we could put it over harder surfaces to provide some protection and pressure relief.
And because the product is thin and made with a sticky adhesive on one side,
it seemed like a good idea to help me with my holy shoes problem.
So what is this miracle product called? It’s called moleskin…yes, moleskin. Now don’t worry
any animal lovers out there, or anyone that gets creeped out by the thought of moles,
it’s not made from moles, it’s actually a heavy, but thin fabric made from cotton. Here’s a small
piece I have for you to see. It’s really soft on one side and then the other side has paper backing
to protect the adhesive side until you apply it onto something. Again, you can see how thin it is,
which was one of the main reasons I decided to give this a shot for saving my shoes.
Some of the other things were that the adhesive was fairly strong, which was good for durability
purposes. Another big thing was that since it was made from cotton, it was breathable,
even though it’s really tightly woven. And then the last thing is that it’s really easy to work
with, you can just trim it with a regular pair of scissors to the size you need. Super easy.
Anyways, so working in the clinic, I had some waste pieces available
and I decided to give it a shot. And I have to say it’s worked really good. So now that I’m gonna be
breaking in a new pair of shoes, I knew I needed to protect them with the moleskin so I thought I
would share this with you guys here on YouTube. Before I tell you more about the moleskin and
where to get it, let me show you how it works: Alright, since there's only a small area where
you need to protect the shoe from your big toe, you only need a small piece.
So taking the sheet of the moleskin and it's just a regular pair of scissors. So you're
just need to cut a piece big enough to cover that area. So, let's make this look like that. Okay.
Now, you can make this bigger if you want to try for the first time but for me this usually just
a small piece is all I really need. Okay, so now that we got to cut what I want to do is I'm going
to loosen my shoe strings up as much as possible because it's hard to get your hand in there.
So you want that tongue to be able to come up.
And again, so what I did was I sort of went backwards here because I knew
the adhesive side goes up. So, I sort of cut it with a little bit of a rounded edge on this side,
something you want to consider before you cut. It can be a little bit tricky to get the adhesive off
so you find the corner that's sort of the easiest way to do it. Once I get that on there, I actually
hold it a little bit with my thumb but it's really hard to get your thumb all the way in there,
so what I add them doing is I end up sort of pinching it like this.
Okay. And I just work it up in there to the point where I feel I'm at this area of the toe.
And don't be afraid to do it to couple times it'll, it'll come back off when it's still
on there. But you want to make sure it's smooth. Want to make sure it's
over that area where the toes gonna hit and again, you just want to put some pressure.
You want to make sure it's sticking as good as it can. Again. I usually hold it and push from
both sides on it to get a lot of good pressure to make sure it's completely sticking to it.
If you don't get a good stick to it, or there's part that's
where there's a part of the adhesive that's not touching it what'll happen is your foot
will start to roll it off. So again, you want to make sure you get in there as good as you can.
Super easy fix. Now, after time, or if you don’t get good contact onto the top of the shoe, you’ll
have to apply some more moleskin. I’ve never tried to add extra glue on top of the adhesive,
but I guess that’s something you could experiment with if you have problems with it sticking.
The good thing is, it’s really easy to get and pretty cheap; I’ve seen it at drug stores and
Target for under 2 dollars…and I’ve seen it charged a lot more, so definitely look around.
Another thing: for anyone that uses a health savings account, moleskin is an hsa eligible item,
so you can get reimbursed for it out of your account tax free. On my first channel, Healthy,
Wealthy, and Wise, I talk a lot about HSAs and in fact I just updated the information
for 2022 in a new video, so you might want to check that out if you haven’t seen it.
Anyway back to buying the moleskin, in most cases it comes in a package with about 3 sheets of it,
with those sheets being probably about 4 to 5 inches long and 3 to 4 inches wide.
Because you need so little for each shoe, one package will probably last you a long time.
The piece I’ve showed you, I’ve been cutting from that one for probably more than ten years over
many pairs of shoes. I’ve also used moleskin for other things as well,
maybe I’ll make more videos on those other things I’ve used it for. Definitely subscribe to the
channel if you don’t want to miss that or seeing other things I do. So far since I’ve just recently
started this second channel, I’ve had videos on replacing a mailbox post without digging,
removing a computer hard drive, and even turning a laminate countertop into a concrete.
All things I had never done before, but all things that turned out really good.
So I hope you consider coming along with me as I continue to show you new DIY things.
Hopefully today’s video will help you preserve the life of your expensive shoes and help
you save some money. If you think it will, and you found the video helpful, please like and share it
with anyone else you think it could help as well. And if you’re interested in DIY investing and
financial types of videos, check out my first channel, Healthy, Wealthy,
and Wise…I’ll link it for you in the description. Thanks so much for watching and have a great day!