White cheer shoes look amazing for approximately five minutes.
Then comes practice.
Grass. Dirt. Gym floors. Track surfaces. Mystery black marks. And somehow, by competition day, the bright white shoes you bought suddenly look like they've survived an entire season.
After figuring out a routine that works surprisingly well for white baseball pants, I wanted the same thing for cheer shoes: something simple, inexpensive, and realistic enough to actually do during a busy sports week.
The good news is that many of the same principles work.
The process just needs a few shoe-specific adjustments.
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What You'll Need
For our white-cheer-shoe cleaning routine, I keep it pretty simple:
- OxiClean White Revive Stain Remover Powder — the same product we use for white baseball pants
- A small bowl, dish pan, or utility tub
- An old toothbrush or soft cleaning brush
- Regular laundry detergent
- A shoe washing machine bag to protect the shoes during the wash
- A microfiber cloth
- Optional: melamine cleaning sponge for stubborn marks on the rubber soles
- Clean towels or plain white paper for helping shoes hold their shape while drying
The shoe-washing bags I like are designed with soft microfiber material around the shoes so they can move through the washing machine without banging directly against the drum.
Step 1: Don't Let Dirty Cheer Shoes Sit in the Bag
This is the cheer version of our number-one baseball-pants rule.
The sooner you deal with the dirt, the easier your life will be.
If the shoes are muddy or covered in grass after outdoor cheer, don't throw them straight into the washing machine. Let heavy mud dry first, then knock or brush off as much loose dirt as possible.
Take out the laces and removable insoles before you start cleaning.
The laces can be washed separately, and removing the insoles helps the inside of the shoes dry much faster.
Step 2: Pre-Treat the White Upper With OxiClean
This is where our baseball-pants routine comes back into play.
For baseball pants, we're comfortable giving them a long OxiClean soak. Shoes are different.
Because cheer shoes contain several materials—including fabric, rubber, foam and adhesives—I don't recommend dropping the entire shoe into a bucket of hot OxiClean water overnight.
Instead, mix a small amount of OxiClean White Revive with lukewarm water according to the product directions.
Dip your toothbrush or soft brush into the solution and gently work it into the dirty white fabric.
Pay extra attention to:
- The toe box
- Around the sides of the shoe
- The fabric directly above the sole
- Grass-stained areas
- Any visibly gray or dingy sections
Let the solution sit briefly while you work on the rest of the shoe, rather than doing the hours-long soak we use for baseball pants.
Important Difference: Skip the Hot Water
Our baseball-pants routine starts with the hottest water available from the faucet.
Don't do that with cheer shoes.
Heat isn't your friend here. Excessive heat can be harder on adhesives, foam, rubber and the overall shape of an athletic shoe.
Stick with cool to lukewarm water.
Step 3: Scrub the Rubber Separately
The rubber around white cheer shoes tends to collect those annoying gray and black marks that don't always disappear in the washing machine.
Use your toothbrush with a little detergent or OxiClean solution and scrub around the rubber edge.
For especially stubborn marks, lightly dampen a melamine cleaning sponge and work only on the rubber portion of the shoe.
Don't aggressively scrub the mesh upper with it—it can be too abrasive for softer fabrics.
This little extra step makes a surprisingly big difference in how white the shoes look when you're finished.
Step 4: Clean the Laces
Put the white laces in a small container with lukewarm water and your diluted OxiClean solution.
Because they're just fabric, you can let them soak longer than the shoes themselves.
After soaking, gently rub the stained sections together, rinse them and either place them in a small laundry bag for washing or rinse and air dry them separately.
Clean laces are one of those tiny details that can make the entire shoe look significantly whiter.
Step 5: Put the Shoes in a Shoe-Washing Bag
This is the step I'd add specifically for cheer shoes.
Once you've removed the loose dirt and pre-treated the stains, put the shoes into a shoe washing machine bag.
The bag you linked is specifically designed for washing sneakers and uses microfiber material around the shoes, along with a covered zipper intended to help protect the washing machine.
See the shoe-washing bag we use on Amazon
It helps keep the shoes contained instead of allowing them to slam around loose inside the washer.
One caution: always check the shoe manufacturer's care instructions before machine washing. I couldn't find an official machine-washing instruction for these BAXINIER shoes, so I would treat machine washing as something to do carefully rather than assuming every cheer shoe is washer-safe.
Step 6: Use a Gentle, Cold-Water Wash
Add your regular detergent and run the shoes through a gentle cycle with cold or cool water.
This is another major difference from our white baseball pants.
With the pants, warmth helps attack deeply embedded dirt.
With shoes, we're balancing two goals:
Get them white again without destroying them.
You don't need an aggressive hot wash after you've already loosened the dirt with your pre-treatment.
If your washer allows it, a lower-spin or delicate setting is preferable.
Step 7: CHECK THEM BEFORE DRYING
This rule carries directly over from the baseball-pants routine.
Do not automatically put stained gear into the dryer.
With baseball pants, dryer heat can set stains. With athletic shoes, there's an additional problem: high heat can also affect the shoes' materials, shape and adhesives.
When the cycle finishes, inspect the shoes.
If you still see stains, repeat your targeted OxiClean treatment or scrub the problem area again.
Don't try to solve the problem by throwing them into a hot dryer.
Step 8: Air Dry—No Dryer
For baseball pants, we're big fans of checking the stains and then using either additional treatment or sunlight before resorting to the dryer.
For cheer shoes, I would go even further:
Skip the dryer entirely.
Stuff the shoes loosely with:
- Clean white towels
- Plain white paper
- Paper towels
This helps absorb moisture while allowing the shoe to maintain its shape.
Then let them air dry in a well-ventilated area.
Avoid putting soaking-wet shoes directly against a heater, using a hair dryer, or baking them in intense heat.
And while sunlight can be fantastic for whitening baseball pants, I wouldn't leave cheer shoes baking in direct sun for hours. Airflow is more important here.
What About Bleach?
Our baseball-pants process includes diluted bleach as an optional last resort for stubborn stains.
I wouldn't make bleach part of the regular cheer-shoe routine.
Athletic shoes combine fabric, stitching, rubber, foam and adhesive, and bleach can be unnecessarily harsh on those materials. It can also sometimes contribute to discoloration or yellowing rather than giving you the crisp-white result you're after.
For cheer shoes, I'd stick with:
OxiClean White Revive + targeted scrubbing + gentle washing.
The 5-Minute Between-Practice Trick
You don't need to completely wash cheer shoes every time they get dirty.
Between practices, do this instead:
Wipe the rubber with a damp microfiber cloth, brush loose dirt from the fabric, spot-clean obvious stains with diluted OxiClean, and let the shoes air out before putting them back in the cheer bag.
Those five minutes can save you from having to do a major rescue operation the night before a competition.
And we all know that's exactly when you discover the shoes are filthy.
Competition Week Tip
If you know you'll need bright-white shoes Saturday morning, don't wait until Friday night to wash them.
Wash them at least a day or two ahead of time.
Cheer shoes can take considerably longer to air dry than regular clothing, especially around the tongue, padding and inside of the toe box.
Nobody wants to discover slightly damp cheer shoes while getting ready to leave for competition.
Our White Cheer Shoe Cleaning Routine
If you want the short version, here's what I'm actually doing:
- Remove laces and insoles.
- Brush off loose dirt.
- Pre-treat stained fabric with diluted OxiClean White Revive and a soft toothbrush.
- Scrub the white rubber separately.
- Put the shoes in a shoe-washing bag.
- Wash gently in cool water with regular detergent.
- Inspect them before drying.
- Spot-treat anything that remains.
- Stuff the shoes to maintain their shape.
- Air dry completely.
It's essentially our white-baseball-pants routine—just adjusted for a much more delicate piece of sports gear.
The Bottom Line
White cheer shoes are probably never going to stay perfectly white during a season.
Especially if your cheerleader practices outside.
In fact, BAXINIER's white cheer shoes use soft breathable knit/mesh-style uppers with flexible rubber outsoles, which is great for cheer but also gives grass and dirt plenty of opportunities to show up.
But they don't need to look brand new after every practice.
The goal is to keep dirt from building up until those white shoes become permanently gray.
A little OxiClean, some targeted scrubbing, a shoe-washing bag, a gentle wash and no dryer has become the shoe version of the same simple routine that works for our white baseball pants.
Because apparently whoever decided youth sports uniforms should be white did not consult the people responsible for washing them.