I’ll never understand people not using shoes from day one until they literally disintegrate from daily use.
i buy nice shoes and still do this. Sneakerheads get weirdly upset about it, i have to defend it all the time. I buy shoes to wear them i thought thats what they were for
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A while back I noticed my foot was wet after walking through some water. It wasn’t deep so I was confused, then I realized it came through the hole that wore through the bottom of my shoe. That was the sign to go get new shoes.
If I find come across a great sale, I might as well pick it up. I wear my shoes until they disintegrate, so it takes a while to get through to the next one, so I’ll have a backup of maybe 3-4. It’s good to at least have one backup just in case anyway.
On second thought maybe collecting things made of volatile petroleum compounds wasn’t a good investment
lol if that were true why are plastics a long term environmental threat?
Because specific kinds of plastic (like polyurethane) undergo hydrolysis when exposed to moisture, which causes what you see in the op
That’s why I keep a oil reserve in a pit out back. Got my pool guy to line it with concrete. Stable and pure petroleum
And it’s so easy to put on! Just dip your toes in for a second and you’re good to go
Flint Lockwood!
Nah I saw this on reddit a while ago when I opened it by accident. It’s a stolen image of someone’s cheap shoes that disintegrated on first wear.
The guy claiming it had the receipts and posted the image like 3 months earlier.
Nah, I think I saw this on threads a bit more while ago :)
Yet I have horrendous blue shower sandals made of some kind of unidentified dense blue foam and these things are almost 30 years old. They barely show any sign of use.
You forgot to check whether or not the shoes are cake before putting them on.
Always give your shoes a solid nom before wearing, to be sure they aren’t cake.
Those soles look like Styrofoam. Rubber does break down over time, so does plastic, but those soles look sus. They appear to be a generic brand too. I believe the manufacturers put together the cheapest shoe possible with 100-1000% mark-up. I’ve had $60 shoes from Kohls have sole failure after being worn 3x because they were made hollow instead of solid.
Yeah they really do
My grandma once gave me a pair of “new shoes”. They fell apart in the middle of an all-day track in the Alps (big mountains). Turns out she bought them for my aunt years ago and then forgot about them.
I went on a hike once with timberland boots that had been in a closet for a couple years. The glue dissolved at the destination (freshwater swimming area) and the rubber sole separated from the leather upper. I had to hike back to the car in moccasins.
Timerland boots are anything but good hiking boots.
Not good for any type of boot. I bought a pair on clearance from Sears. Legit wanted a pair of steel toe work boots for yard work and other work around the house. After about 3 years of light wear the soul started to fall away.
I would have been better off with a cheap work boot from Walmart.
On the flip side, i have a pair I bought in 1994 in an outlet mall on a road trip to LA to Vegas (as an Aussie), i still wear them.
Almost same thing happened to me, including them being timberland boots.
These things have long been subject to enshittification.
I had some Docs split between lower and mid sole after light wear. I guess there was a reason they got rid of their lifetime warranty.
Supposedly the good ones are Solovair, who made Docs at one point (probably when the warranty was still offered). But I doubt that few, if any shoes are made well anymore.
Yeah, I’ve looked at those. I worry about sizing though because I’d have to order online and at the time I think they only shipped from the UK so if they didn’t fit returning would be a PITA.
Wearing your shoes actually helps prevent this. Basically every sneaker collector has (or knows someone who has) a story like this. The soles get brittle over time, and will fall apart if they have sat for too long. But if you wear them, it helps avoid that from happening. The natural flexing when you walk helps the sole stay flexible. If it has sat for years, it will shatter into dust as soon as you try to flex it.
Sort of like how cast metal is more brittle than forged metal. Because when you cast metal, it hardens in random or crystalline molecular patterns. So there is very little actually holding the individual molecules together, because every join where two crystals meet is a potential fracture point. But forging it into shape with a hammer will create a more sturdy piece, because the hot hammering forces the molecules out of those natural crystal patterns. By moving the metal around, the molecules are able to form much stronger bonds with their neighbors.
Anyone who has accidentally shattered a cast iron skillet by dropping it knows what I’m talking about. People expect metal to bend, because they’re used to thinking of forged metals that have been mechanically shaped while it was hot. But cast iron will shatter like glass, because it is just poured into a mold and the molecules stay wherever they were when the molten metal cooled, even if they don’t have strong bonds with their neighbors.
your explanation is actually backwards, metals are counter intuitive at the molecular scale
Forging does not align the molecules, it actually mixes them up, and removes carbon.
Cast iron is brittle for 2 reasons. when cooling from molten the molecules are able to align into large crystals, and where these crystals meet is a boundary where cracks can start and easily propogate. And carbon in the mix makes it much more difficult for the molecules to “slip” past each other.
Hmm this might explain why the soles fell off my nice dress shoes after the second time ever wearing them.
A couple of months ago I was invited to go hiking with some friends. When preparing, since I didn’t have some hiking boots, I saw my boots that I got in my military service. That was a great idea because they were already broken in and all of that stuff.
After around 3/4 of the almost 15km hike, I lost the sole on the first boot and a km after that the other side. Had to finish the hike on both without a sole.
Well, they were standing around for like 10 years so I am not surprised that they failed and that the whole stuff between sole and shoe Desintegrated but still.
10 years without being oiled, i guess. The leather would dessicate, maybe?
My soles have a cork layer that seems like it would crumble even if well treated.
Most likely they were stored in a warm and humid place. Polyurethane foam can get something called hydrolysis, where moisture breaks down the polymers in the foam.
The leather was fine. The part between the rubber sole and the leather shoe (I think it is called midsole?) just disintegrated.
The were stored in my shoe rack. I wouldn’t say that it is particularly humid there but it would be warm-ish (depending on the weather).
I wasn’t particularly shocked by this since they were simply lying around for that long. Maybe active use would have extended their life a bit more.
But maybe I can give them to someone that can add a new midsole so that they can be used again.
Sounds promising. My shoe guy charges $50CAD tor redoing the bottoms.
They don’t make boots like they used too. My boots from back then (just over 20 years old now) are still in great shape, Bates made some rock solid boots back then (either that or all the polishing in basic made them invincible).
Going to work a special occasion? I mean maybe he was unemployed for a long time, or got his dream job, but still, sounds funny without any context.
Or maybe he realized that if he hadn’t had a special occasion by then, maybe he should just wear his shoes and get some enjoyment out of them instead of saving them for some vague moment that might never come or maybe he wouldn’t even think about the shoes until after if it did. Or maybe such an occasion did come up and he did forget the shoes until after and then just decided to wear them to work.
Or he works a white collar job and had a presentation or something so it was a special occasion.
Happened to me. It was snowing like mad, so I thought I could use my hiking boots instead of shoes when I went out. After a few hundred meters, the foam between the boot and the sole started to disintegrate. When I was back home, the soles were only attached at the front, and the dampening material from the heel nearly to the toes was gone.
I was at a mountain equipment store a week ago and started talking with the owner about how shoes have completely random durability. Even same model from same brand can last years or fall apart in couple of months. She said that very often this will depend on how long the shoe was in a box as the rubber and glue don’t last forever.
My previous pair of walking boots I had for someone like 15 years. I cannot imagine a pair of shoes which disintegrates without being with in a few years.
Yeah, I’ve never had a pair just fall apart, I still have boots from my internship 30 years ago.
Same. My usual failure mode is wearing through the soles. I wear through a pair of “general purpose” shoes in 2-3 years, and I have boots from 10+ years ago that just start to show the first issues.
would be kinda cool if they could figure out resoling sneakers :)
I have to admit, I have never had a shoe resoled. I should start doing that. Problem of living in a country (and world) where buying new is cheaper than repairing :(
You can only get certain shoes resoled. Fancy stitched leather dress shoes essentially, that or fully stitched boots.
Did you even looked at the best by date? Keep them in the fridge until you have to use them.
Gotta use the freezer-grade aluminum foil too.
My mom used to work with this lady who was always seen with dusting shoes because she didn’t like throwing old things away, instead prefering to wear the shoes until they couldn’t be used anymore. So sometimes that woman pulled shoes older than your grandma and put dust all over the office.
While shoes should be cleaned before wearing, she was right. Shoes and clothes in general should be worn until those cant be worn anymore.
Clothes sure, shoes no. Shoes lose the ability to properly support us with time and wear. Unfortunately, like bras, they need to be semi-regularly replaced. The adage is to always spend more on anything that goes between you and the ground (mattress, tires).
Doesn’t that usually go together with shoes starting to fall apart as well?
My pair of Chuck Taylors had no support when I bought them 25 years ago, and they still don’t have any support today.
Arch support and comfy shoes are a perpetual cycle. You need those shoes because you wore those types of shoes and it made your feet “weak”.
It’s not the support, it’s the wear of the sole. They don’t wear down evenly and can eventually negatively affect how you walk and cause issues. Even if you wear flat barefoot shoes. Like usually the inside part of the heel will wear down faster if they are worn down too much it can cause pronation or supination issues in some people.
You do understand that people have different feet right? You being a flatfoot doesn’t mean others are
I’m not. The arches are there, and I own work boots with good support and all that. I just don’t where shoes like that all the time, so all the muscles and tendons and ligaments in my feet never got weakened. You weren’t born needing shoes.
I broke my left arm 25 years ago. And it’s still broken today.
Healing bones is a perpetual cycle. You need that arm because you’ve lived with it, it made your limbs weak.
Big shitpost energy, five stars!
No, as in until they’re the dust of earth. (If you get what I mean… (was the pun good?))
