Yeah, any leather shoes will wear out much faster if you don't let them sit and dry out after wearing.

Shoe trees can vastly prolong the lifespan of a pair of shoes.

Are you stomping through mud puddles daily with your shoes?

Regular foot sweat should be long since evaporated away with just an overnight stay in the shoe closet unless perhaps you live in an un-airconditioned house in a swamp.

I wear the same pair of leather shoes every day and in the end it's the soles that wear out, not the leather. They aren't even fancy shoes, just run of the mill Dockers.

That's a great failure mode as you can simply get them re-soled.

Theoretically, but the couple of times I've checked it would cost pretty much the same or more to re-sole my shoes as it would be to buy a brand new pair. It's pretty hard to find anybody who even does that anymore, and their clients are people with extremely expensive imported dress shoes.

Not sure where you are but in the UK Timpsons are absolutely everywhere (although the quality and pricing of repairs seems pretty hit and miss - some stores are excellent, others less so).

And there are still plenty of independent shops kicking about. Most places offering lock smith services also offer shoe repair.

Huh. So you are saying if I have 2 pairs of identical shoes, A and B, if I wear A for T months, then B for T months, by alternating every day I should get >2T months out?

You absolutely get > 2T out. Potentially up to 4T.

This is because much of the wear on your shoes does not come from steps and hitting the ground. It comes from sweat and moisture inside the shoe, and the inside of your shoe takes a REALLY long time to dry out fully.

If you wanted to extend of life of a shoe without rotating pairs you can also buy a shoe drying rack. This is what a lot of people in construction do with extensive work boots.

I have so many pairs of shoes now that I only wear some of them a few times a year. I only ever buy ones that I’ll have forever on deep discount (picked up a couple pair of Allen Edmonds for $100 each recently).

For the price of 2 Allen Edmonds bought retail, I could have 7 pairs of their timeless shoes, rotate them regularly, and never buy shoes again.

In reality, I have 4. 2 brown and 2 black, and that’s more than enough. My Dad has the same, and is still wearing his from the 80s on a daily basis.

The top of the line Allen Edmonds dress shoes (forget the model right now) are really high quality uppers. You can re-sole them many times.

Yes, it allows the materials to dry out and prevents microscopic damage from hydrolysis or mould et al.

This is an old wive's tale.