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Are Boot Trees Necessary For Cowboy Boots?

By: Author Jay Gatz

Posted on  - Last updated:

Are Boot Trees Necessary For Cowboy Boots?

To take the best care of cowboy boots, you will need a lot of things such as a leather cleaner, leather conditioner, or polish.

But, among the specialized tools to care for cowboy boots, I still believe that boot trees are always an essential item.

In fact, aside from cleaning or polishing your cowboy boots, you’ll need to do more jobs to care for them if you want your cowboy boots to last long and stay as good as new. Boot trees will help you do that.

Today’s article will explain to you why you need boot trees for cowboy boots and how to use boot trees properly.

Let’s get started!

Key takeaways

  • Boot trees are an essential tool to care for cowboy boots.
  • You can benefit from boot trees a lot without having to spend a lot of money on other tools. For example, they can help in drying and keeping the shape of the boots.
  • Using boot trees is easier and more efficient than using household items.
  • Boot trees are small and don’t take up much space in your home.

Do You Really Need Boot Trees for Cowboy Boots?

As a cowboy boot collector who has owned a lot of different items for taking care of cowboy boots, I always appreciate boot trees.

The simple thing is that boot trees are very versatile, inexpensive, and do not take up much space in your home.

The first thing is the ability to absorb sweat and leave a pleasant scent in cowboy boots.

Cowboy boots with a tall construction (over 11 inches) make it very difficult for you to clean them “on the inside”. Therefore, the odors from your foot sweat will stay in the boots.

If you use boot trees on a daily basis (stuffing them in your boots) you can get rid of a lot of odors over time, limiting the number of times you struggle to clean the inside of your cowboy boots.

Besides, you don’t have to constantly buy many bottles of boot odor eliminator to deodorize your boots.

The second thing you’ll love about boot trees is that they keep the boots dry from the inside. This is due to the fact that boot trees are made from cedar which can absorb moisture very well.

The inside of cowboy boots is very hard to dry. If you don’t use boot trees, you can use a boot dryer to get good results. But compared to boot trees, boot dryers are way more expensive.

A lot of people often never really dry the inside of cowboy boots. This inadvertently degrades the quality of your boots significantly, as moisture can damage the leather in the long run.

Before going to sleep, insert boot trees into your cowboy boots, and they will do the job for you.

A pair of cowboy boots on the wooden floor

Finally, the main feature of boot trees that makes you love them is that they keep cowboy boots in good shape.

Humidity, ambient temperature, weather, work intensity, etc. – all of these factors can possibly cause your cowboy boots to stretch, shrink, or in other words, lose their shape. From there, your cowboy boots will have ugly wrinkles and creases.

Boot trees will ensure your boots are not affected by moisture (as explained above) and do not stretch (caused by wetness) or shrink (due to cold). As long as you tuck them into the boots, the shape of the boots will always stay original.

Tecovas Men's Boot Trees

Men’s Boot Trees | Image copyright Tecovas Boot Company | #CommissionEarned | Click image for more info

Usually, many people also like to use some household items such as newspaper or toilet paper to stuff into the boots to absorb moisture and keep their shape.

This is also a good and quite effective way, but it takes a lot of time to get the paper to fit neatly and snugly in cowboy boots.

And when you take it out, it also takes time to get the paper scraps out of the boots.

Some people prefer to use a hair dryer to dry their boots, but you need to be careful while using this method as the high heat of the hair dryer can damage the boots. In addition, the hair dryer might not dry the toe box totally.

Cowboy boots

In short, boot trees can help you save a lot of time and money to take care of cowboy boots and still get effective results. Therefore, owning boot trees is never a redundant thing.

If your house is not large and you want to live minimally, then boot trees that are smaller than a pair of shoes will be a very good choice.

However, note that boot trees can only do the best job of keeping boots in shape.

In case your boots are completely wet from the rain, I suggest you use other methods to dry them.

And if your boot trees get wet from soaking too much water, I also recommend leaving them out in the sun or in front of a fan to let them dry before inserting boot trees.

Before you leave

Boot trees are very versatile. Some of their outstanding uses are wicking moisture and keeping cowboy boots dry while leaving a pleasant scent. In addition, boot trees can also keep boots in good shape, and are very easy to use.

Investing in boot trees for your cowboy boots is always a wise choice.

That’s all!