My Simple Feet Fix

I have a tip today to share with all you people out there with tough dry and cracked feet. I have quite a problem with this! Some of it I believe is hereditary but also I think some of it came from way back in my teens when I did 2 short term mission trips. I went with Teen Missions international, an agency that requires everyone to wear steel toe work boots 24/7. At least they did the first year I went. The second year we were allowed one reasonable pair of "dress" shoes for Sunday so we didn't look so ridiculous in our work boots and floor length floral dresses. I would like to think that I was able to rock that look but I'm not sure if that's even possible. The problem with wearing work boots all the time is when your feet get wet, and they do when you run an obstacle coarse in the swamp of Florida every day, they stay wet all day. Since I wasn't particularly good at the obstacle coarse my feet were always wet and that led to a condition known as jungle rot. This is something that happened to solders in the trenches at war. It is where your feet get wrinkled and from walking around the folds get permanently pressed into your feet. These folds then will crack and bleed. Though it's been 18 years since I did my Teen Missions trips I still have some slight folds from those days. Since my feet are very dry to begin with these spots will on random occasions still crack and bleed.

I've tried quite a few methods to fix this including wearing that heavy expensive foot cream in socks in bed over night, a few pedicures (when I can get over the idea of someone touching my feet) where they file off a few layers of skin, and a few of those scrubbing boards that you can buy at drug stores. The files that I have bought have never really worked very well and after only 2 or 3 uses they are pretty much garbage. The glue they use to stick it to the paddle doesn't hold up to staying in the shower and after using it a couple times the bumpy sandpaper part starts to wear off. I was pretty much at the point of just living with it. I mean I can get over the bottoms of my feet catching on bead sheets and the occasional carpet, right?

Then a few weeks ago I was helping my husband as we prep our walls for painting. He had bought these washable sanding blocks from Home Depot that we were using for sanding off the massive amounts of wall filler we needed to use. While I looked at it I noticed an uncanny similarity to pumice stones and foot files. I asked how much they were and for the 5 pack that Randall had picked up it was less than $10! This is what I would have paid for one foot file that wouldn't work. The picture is of a 3 pack I found on the Home Depot web site. They are a lot larger than the one I'm using but they are $10 for 3.

I through one in the shower and have been using it for the last few weeks with great results. The sponge isn't wearing out and it's managing to slough off the tough, cracked layer of skin and it making a noticeable difference in how dry and rough my feet look. I do still have a ways to go but so far this has been the best product I have found for my difficult feet and it didn't cost a fortune.