Breaking in Your New Pair of Shoes

A few weeks ago, I fell madly in love with this pair of black flats from Nine West. I usually don't buy shoes online because my persnickety (read: maarte) feet don't take too kindly to closed shoes, hence my multiple pairs of Havainas. However, that particular pair was on sale and it was just too pretty to let go so I broke my cardinal shoe shopping rule and bought a pair online.

Unfortunately, there is no great and happy ending to this story (yet!) because the pretty flats have not been kind to my feet :( After an hour or two of wearing them, the sides of my feet started to hurt because the leather (or man-made leather) was just too hard for my tootsies. But I was not about to give up on my new pair of flats yet so I scoured the internet for tips on how to break in a new pair of shoes. I looked at a lot of sites and these were the common tips they had:

1. Put on a pair of thick socks and wear your new pair of shoes inside the house for two to three days. This way, the shoes will adjust to the shape of your feet without painful blisters and chafing on your part.
2. If the shoe has a particularly stubborn "tight spot" where it is squeezing or rubbing excessively, try spraying the area with shoe or leather stretching spray, available at shoe stores, and use a shoe stretcher to widen it out.
3. If you have to use your new pair right away, put band-aids on the parts of your feet which rub against your shoes. This way, you'll prevent blisters while breaking in your new pair.
4. Rub petroleum jelly on the inside of your shoe to soften the leather.
5. Put wet wadded up newspaper inside your shoe to soften the leather.
6. If your shoes are tight in the toe area, stuff a thick sock in the toe area to stretch it out.

Of course, the best tip is to buy shoes that already feel comfortable while trying them out in the store. This means going shoe shopping in the late afternoon when your feet have already expanded and walking in them a few times inside the store. But there are just so many gorgeous pairs of shoes out there that all thoughts of comfort are conveniently pushed aside when you come face to face with a veritable work of art. Yup, the vain don't complain. Instead, they just follow these tips and hope for the best that those killer shoes will eventually be termed as such solely for its looks and not for the pain they wreak on your peds.