A week ago I was watching an episode of "James May's Man Lab", a show by one of the TopGear hosts about rediscovering Man-skills. Exactly something that I would and do like. The show had a part about how to properly shine your shoes, they brought in a young sergeant who explained the simple task of shining shoes..
At that point I realized that I always use those cheap easy shine things, and never actually learned how to shine shoes the proper way. So I rewinded, watched it again, collected all the shoe shine things I had... mostly junk. But one proper brush, and a bit of proper wax and cream.
Now a week later, after I've been practicing on all my shoes. I had to start practicing on my girlfriends shoes, and finally I got some real results. Its all about the right amount of colorless cream, properly brushing it in, and then steadily polishing the wax. First I put on too much wax, then when I ran out of wax I had to continue on the cream, also put on too much. When I realized the brush was saturated with cream and wax, I decided just to brush the shoes with no extra cream. Next up was polishing it, this time I also used a slightly damp piece of cloth instead of a slightly dripping wet one.. and the result is a shiny set of women's boots size 38.
Trivial as it may seem, re-learning this skill is just as satisfying as the first piece of working software, the first bow that doesn't break, or the first tomatoes from the garden!
