How to clean shoe laces

Let them soak

We pull the laces and drop them in warm water with a spoon of detergent for half an hour. Most of the grime lets go without any effort at all. Go make tea.

Then a quick scrub

Rub them between your palms, or lay them on the counter and go over them with an old toothbrush. The part that sits under the top eyelets is always the dirtiest, so give that a bit longer.

White laces that went grey

An oxygen-based stain remover in the soak helps a lot. Chlorine bleach, not so much, since most laces are polyester and it can turn them faintly yellow. Bit of a cruel joke, that.

Machine? Sure, for these

Laces are the one part of a shoe we are happy to see in a washing machine. Put them in a mesh bag or tie them inside a pillowcase so they do not knot themselves around everything, and wash them with towels.

Or just get new ones

Frayed tips, stretched out, stains that will not shift. New laces cost less than a cutting chai and a vada pav. When we clean white sneakers, a fresh pair of laces is often the thing that makes people say "these look new".