UrbanUpdate

Our poor, unfortunate soles deserve more love. They carry around our weight all day, often tucked away in the damp, dark depths of our shoes. They develop blisters and calluses and cracked heels—and are at constant risk for fungal infections and odorous bacteria.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. In fact, a handful of well-intentioned habits can keep your feet smooth, strong, and stank-free every day of the year. Here are nine tips for having fresh, healthy feet 24/7.

1. Powder Your Peds Every Morning

Powder-based foot products will help prevent moisture accumulation throughout the day, which will mean you accumulate less sweat throughout the day. In turn, this prevents the proliferation of microbes (both fungus and odor-causing bacteria). You’ll also just enjoy not having swampy feet all day long. You can sprinkle actual powders into your socks or on the feet if you like (though in the sock makes less of a mess); you can also spray on powder-based aerosols or lather on a powder-based cream. Formulas may include tapioca starch, corn starch, zinc oxide, kaolin, but the basic idea is the same—they keep your feet dry.

Gold Bond

Menthol 1% Cooling Foot Powder$8

Amazon

Dr. Scholl's

Powder-Based Foot Spray$5

Amazon

Happy Nuts

Lotion-to-Powder Cream$15

Amazon

2. Use Foot Cream

Of all the chemical exfoliants you can use on your feet, urea/uric acid is the most expedient and thorough on worst-case scenarios; get a highly concentrated urea formula for this. For general upkeep, you can opt for a lower concentration of the ingredient, or even a lactic acid foot cream in the 10-15% range. Both ingredients soften skin but also trap moisture inside so that you don’t lose any suppleness while they buff away dead cells.

Apply this foot cream after your nightly shower, once your feet are towel dried (a pinch damp is ok). It can help to wear socks over top of them, too, in the event it feels weird to leave goopy footprints all over your house. Let the product absorb into the skin for a few minutes before you put on the socks. (It sometimes helps to apply the product while sitting on the edge of your bed; just scroll your phone or read a chapter while it absorbs for a few minutes.)

If your feet are too sensitive to these exfoliating creams—or if they’re already soft and you’re just trying to maintain this supple stasis—then choose a foot cream with a nourishing base, like shea butter.

Dr. Scholl's

25% Urea Foot Cream$7 $6

Amazon

AmLactin

15% Lactic Acid Foot Cream$12

Amazon

Pedestrian Project

Shea Butter Foot Cream$12

Amazon

3. Wash Them!

This may seem obvious, but you’ve got to wash your feet to keep them clean and smelling acceptable. Letting the water drip down in the shower is simply not enough. If you’ve got a particularly stubborn case of stank, an anti-baterial soap like Irish Spring can work wonders.

Irish Spring

Bar Soap (12-pack)$10

Target

4. Do a Weekly Scrub

Your feet accumulate dead skin much more than other body parts; whereas you might get a few blemishes on your face, your foot manages to build the Callus Mountain Range across your soles. One way to mitigate this is by doing a gritty foot scrub once a week; you can use a rinse-away product for this if you want a tingly-fresh feeling from toes to ankles, or you can target the sole itself with an electric callus grinder. (Go gentle with that one on otherwise fresh, smooth skin.)

Another pro tip: After a real good scrub, deploy a peppermint-tinged foot lotion for a purifying and refreshing zing. Or better yet, get a scrub with peppermint oils inside.

The Body Shop

Peppermint Foot Scrub$30 $27

Amazon

Own Harmony

Electric Callus Grinder$32 $30

Amazon

5. Let Your Shoes Breathe

If you can avoid wearing the same shoes two days in a row, then try rotating them so that they all have proper time to dry out between uses. You can also deploy some other kind of neutralizing agent inside the shoe to help minimize any microbes and to keep them from reeking. Shoe deodorizers will use odor-absorbing ingredients like activated charcoal, baking soda, bamboo powder, and zinc oxide to neutralize things, or even essential oils like peppermint.

RocketPure

Deodorizing Shoe and Foot Powder (2 pack)$22

Amazon

6. Get Pedicures

It might be a hard sell if we tell you to get monthly pedicures; sure, you’ve been clipping your nails just fine all these years, so why pay $20-50 for someone else to do it once a month? Maybe a quarterly refresh is a better option, since each session will produce drastic results while keeping serious dead-cell buildup at bay. Regardless of your frequency, remember the pedicure is always available to you, and will leave your feet smoother, softer, and properly clipped. Pull that lever if you’ve got an open-toed beach wedding coming up.

7. Do Daily Foot Stretches

Maintaining foot flexibility is great for lifelong agility and for preventing short-term ailments. You can maintain this flexibility by doing daily foot stretches each morning. It will also improve circulation to the feet, general range of motion, and can reduce pain associated with achilles tendonitis or plantar fasciitis. Add it into a daily yoga or stretching routine, no matter how brief.

8. Wear Moisture-Wicking Socks

As comfy as pure cotton socks may be, it’s one of the most moisture-absorbent materials, which isn’t good for reducing microbial matters. So, absolutely avoid cotton socks if you are doing intense exercise, have suffocating shoes, or tend to sweat a lot.

Our favorite sock fabrics are moisture-wicking, which means they move moisture from the skin to the outside of the material, where it can properly evaporate. Nylon, polyester, spandex, wool, and bamboo are the primary picks for that. If you can find socks in those materials (or even in a blend with cotton), then you’ll spare yourself the swampy situation and prevent fungus and odor alike.

Adidas

Polyester-Spandex Crew Socks (6 pairs)$20

Adidas

Nike

Ankle Socks with Cotton-Spandex-Polyester-Nylon Blend (6 pairs)$22

Nike

9. When All Feels Helpless, Resort to the Peel

While many people (like runners) wear their calluses with pride, the rest of us would do anything to hit “reset” and start fresh with smooth feet. That’s where foot peels come in: This isn't a product you want to use monthly (maybe every 6 is the best cadence), but an hour’s application can give you perfectly smooth feet—if you don’t mind waiting 7-14 days for the feet to shed that dead skin. It can be a gross process as the skin sheds away (definitely wear socks around the house and to bed), but on the other side of that wait is a pair of baby-smooth dogs. If you’re planning ahead of a barefoot occasion, then do your foot peel at least two weeks in advance. You’ll still be able to maintain a normal life while things shed away, but the constantly molting foot is a bit odd.

Baby Foot

Peel$25

Amazon

Adam Hurly has been covering men's grooming since 2013 (and for GQ since 2016). He is also a travel writer. In Fall 2024, Adam is launching Blue Print by Adam Hurly, a men's grooming platform. Adam resides in Lisbon (previously Berlin, NYC, and San Francisco). He is a Sioux Falls, SD, native... Read moreWriterInstagramRelated Stories for GQBathroom and Shower