Yeah VFFs are funky...but sometimes not in the good way

[morgan_4785]

Been in my KSO's for 2 months. Tried most of the suggestions for " defunking" with little success. Inspired by discussions with regards to the potential bacterial and fungal component to the funk I began to use Lysol Spray. Kills 99.9 percent of bugs in just 30 seconds. It is easy to spray into the "fingers" and I soak my KSO's both inside and out. Yesterday I did 20k through the cow pasture highlands and not all the soft sticky stuff was mud. I rinsed them thoroughly, sprayed with Lysol and then dry over the furnace vents. Clean,dry and fresh smelling by morning. $3.99 per can.

this may very well be a cure all here guys...

[Jimmy Hart]

i've been preaching lysol forever and no one would listen. 

[Anderson]

i've been preaching lysol forever and no one would listen. 

Bitter, party of one, your table in the corner is ready!   

I am guessing you were listened to by SOMEone--you seem to have one of the more respected voices in this forum.  If anything, your advice probably got lost in the huge flood of other recommended rituals.  I'm amazed at how many approaches are posted here...and how wildly different they are.  It doesn't speak well of VFF's resistance to odor problems.

Anyway, I have a new can of Lysol here.  Ready for action!  Thanks, tequiladoc for the great idea.  Why didn't someone think of this sooner??   

[Jimmy Hart]

Anderson...so funny.  I was just pointing out that I had mentioned it a few times here and in a couple of other forums and I actually got laughed at a little bit.  Thank you though for thinking I'm reputable and I'll keep my pity to myself next time :-)  seriously though the lysol is the best thing i've come across.  i've learned some from this thread too though.  i started washing my feet before putting on my shoes and that has gotten rid of the black crud build up that i used to get. 

[gb]

Lysol was my first try; didn't work out well. ended up a mixture of stinky feet + lysol smell... a chemically organic mess of a smell.

Tried efferdent as suggested here (or the Safeway generic brand, kind of like mupuk to VFF..) 

worked great!  got all the smell out. 

my sprints and classics get gunky but not smelly, but the KSO smell can get out of control!!

[Anderson]

Anderson...so funny.  I was just pointing out that I had mentioned it a few times here and in a couple of other forums and I actually got laughed at a little bit.  Thank you though for thinking I'm reputable and I'll keep my pity to myself next time :-)  seriously though the lysol is the best thing i've come across.  i've learned some from this thread too though.  i started washing my feet before putting on my shoes and that has gotten rid of the black crud build up that i used to get. 

Glad the jest was well taken!  I too have taken the washing of feet to heart and am sure it helps.  I've been wearing Classics to work and have been kicking them off pretty often.  Yesterday I went out barefoot to check out a stray cat at the door and that pretty much killed the clean feet.  The Classics now look pretty dirty inside, but I'm hoping that's ok since it's "real dirt" and not a buildup from my own feet.  I Lysol'd em and will get out the old toothbrush this weekend.

gb:  I'm wondering if Lysol might have helped more if it were used to prevent the smell, rather than fight one that was already established?  I guess I will know in time.  Efferdent worked for my sis-in-law, but only for a while.  I referred her to this site to read up on other options.

[Charles T]

skin is highly absorbent so I take that into consideration when cleaning mine,generally speaking,there is a disconnect  for many people judging by all of the weird crap people rub into their skin like B&B Works,sunscreen,makeup,lotion,odor eater,cologene,aluminum,spray on tan ect

[Anderson]

skin is highly absorbent so I take that into consideration when cleaning mine,generally speaking,there is a disconnect  for many people judging by all of the weird crap people rub into their skin like B&B Works,sunscreen,makeup,lotion,odor eater,cologene,aluminum,spray on tan ect

 

[gb]

  Efferdent worked for my sis-in-law, but only for a while. 

oh no!  not good to hear!!

As for pre-spraying, no I have pre-spray with Lysol.  My pre-spraying experience was with "Odor-eaters", and it created VERY BAD results with my Sprint, I think causing more smells than otherwise.

[gb]

shoot, a colleague just walked into my office and well, immediately went to open the window... he was nice enough to say oh it must be the bananas.

but ...  I know better, i.e. the efferdent didn't work!!!

[Anderson]

shoot, a colleague just walked into my office and well, immediately went to open the window... he was nice enough to say oh it must be the bananas.

but ...  I know better, i.e. the efferdent didn't work!!!

HAHAHA!  Too funny.  It's either the bananas or your monkey feet.
But seriously...do you notice they smell still?  I thought it had worked for you so far.   

[gb]

it did clean the previous round of smell.  The shoes smelled fine when I put them on in the morning, but it was a wet/rainy day, perhaps that's why by late afternoon, the wet sneaker smell came back..

[jadias]

Has anyone tried chalking their feet before putting them in VFFs? Something like climber's chalk should do the trick. Might help to absorb moisture before it gets to the shoes.

The volcanic ash from the recent eruption is blowing into Reykjavik at the moment and it's getting into my KSOs. Instead of black foot gunk building up, I'm getting black ash! My feet feel bone dry even after a day in them. Of course they also smell of sulfur, but I'm sort of used to the smell here.

[gryllus]

Though I luckily didn´t have t try it on the VFFs yet, I may finally have a rather drastic but working de-stinking recipe. I tried it last year on my old Solomon Techamphibians which caught the stink during a very rainy camping holiday, after I have waded into some brackish marsh and afterwards had the shoes continuously wet for 3 days due to rain. After washing and drying, they became even worse, so I ended up
1) filling a bit over half a bucket (cca 6 litres) with as hot water as I got out of the tap (50oC maybe - defnitely too hot to keep a hand in)
2) adding an equivalent of a shot glass of household chlorine bleach (i.e. something like 3 % sodium hypochlorite solution)
3) soaking the shoes until the water cooled down ( I wouldn´t mind them fading at this point of desperate efforts to kill the stink)
4) rinsing them under the shower and giving them a regular wash
5) one more rinse in hot water, since now they still stank of chlorine
6) drying in the sun
I wore them for the rest of summer, stink-free, just with very faint chlorine smell. They did not fade noticeably, and they still smell fine, even after I wore them for half of the last weekend in hot and not exactly dry conditions (haymaking is not an activity I would dare to do in VFFs).
 

[bigs]

I have the solution.  I work in the insurance restoration industry and we use a new disinfectant called Benefect.  Its main ingredient is Thyme oil.  Soak em in Benefect 15 minutes, rinse, handwash, and dry.  Voila, no odor!  You can get it on the internet or local janitor supply house.