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Crocs: protecting feet from emergency room floors, muddy stream beds, asphalt, even fashion runways. These ubiquitous squishy clogs elicit fierce opinions along the love/hate divide, but we understand the attraction to their durability and relatively low price point. The shoes are made from a proprietary material the company has dubbed Croslite, which starts out as EVA, or ethylene-vinyl acetate—a versatile, cushy-but-tough, flexible copolymer. (Despite the nickname “BirkenCrocs,” Birkenstock Arizona EVAs, a staff favorite, are made from a different type of ethylene-vinyl acetate.) Both Croslite and EVA are resistant to moisture, dirt, oils, and other funky substances.

But Crocs are still shoes, and they routinely get dirty enough for readers to ask us and the rest of the internet how to clean them. To answer that, we made Crocs dirty on purpose. We traipsed through grass, scuffled in mud, and even stepped right in a pile of dog poop—deliberately. Only one substance, an almost universally adored condiment, eluded all our efforts and left unsightly, visible staining.

It depends on how dirty your shoes are. Cleaning a few small smudges off the tops will only take a minute or two but getting in between the ridges on the bottom of the sole and in the crevices behind the strap clasp can be more time-consuming.

Crocs doesn’t recommend tossing its shoes in the washing machine and suggests spot-cleaning and air-drying instead. In almost every case, this worked fine, though some stains took longer than others. Make sure the area where you’re working doesn’t become sullied by whatever you’re cleaning off the shoes. This hopefully goes without saying, but if you step in dog poop, wash your clogs outdoors rather than in a kitchen sink.

In order to find the most common complaints about substances that stain Crocs, we spoke with folks who wear them and combed through various Reddit threads. Not surprisingly, dirt is the main culprit, but several people noted that red clay found in southeastern US soil is particularly hard to remove. I happened to have a trip to South Carolina already on the books, so while there, I stomped around a muddy, rust-colored construction site (safely and with permission) then let the shoes dry, still covered in dirt.

One week later, I removed the larger mud chunks then wiped away the rest using lukewarm water (Crocs recommends cold) and dish soap. I was prepared for the red clay to put up a fight and had an arsenal of cleaning products lined up, but after a vigorous scrub with dish soap, the rust-colored tint came right off and the surface returned to bright white.

I used a toothbrush to get in between the grooves at the bottom of the shoes and under the rivet where the heel strap connects to the clog.

Sidewalk grime and dog poop came right off using the same technique. About that second one: Since this unfortunate situation tends to happen while you’re on the go and requires immediate attention, we recommend keeping some travel-size Clorox wipes in your bag to remove the bulk. I tried using Shout wipes after purposely stepping in a pile of droppings, but found the cleaning rectangles to be much too small for the task at hand. Had I not been wearing gloves, I would have gotten the waste of a beloved dog friend all over my hands.

Crocs are especially popular with kids, so I smothered the soles with blue acrylic paint and Elmer’s glitter glue and let the sticky stuff dry overnight. The following day, thicker pieces of both the paint and glue peeled right off. A blue stain from the paint came out with soap and water, but a faint blue tinge beneath the rivet that fastens the strap to the clog remained. I soaked the shoe in warm water with dish soap for twenty minutes and scrubbed again, with no luck. I then treated the area with baking soda and gave it yet another scrub with the toothbrush before deciding to live with it, since the stains are so hidden and faint that they’re only noticeable if you’re looking for them.

Venturing back outside, I handed the shoes off to a Wirecutter editor with a backyard, who vigorously rubbed the Crocs with mud and grass then let the shoes sit for two days. Like with the southern red clay, the dirt washed right off, but grass stains proved more difficult. Scrubbing with Dawn didn’t cut it, but a toothbrush with some mild laundry detergent lightened the green stains a little. Next, he created a paste of baking soda and water and let the solution sit for a while before adding vinegar. After some more scrubbing, a greenish-brown tint was still visible, so he let the Crocs dry air-dry for several hours while looking into additional cleaning methods to try. When he returned, he was pleasantly surprised to see that the stain had almost completely vanished. We reached out to the company to find out why this occurred, but they didn’t respond to our questions.

If you get sriracha hot chili sauce on your white Crocs, learn to love the orange blobs and streaks it leaves behind. After all the cleaning methods outlined above didn’t fade the marks, we moved on to harder stuff like a Mr.Clean Magic Eraser, OxiClean, isopropyl alcohol, and Clorox Bathroom Bleach Foamer. None of them worked. I got so frustrated that I even tried Goo Gone, and while the adhesive remover did lighten the orange stain a little, it isn’t meant to be used on plastic, so we don’t recommend trying this (especially since it did little to fix the issue). As a final attempt—and against Crocs advice—we ran the shoes through a washing machine after a long OxiClean presoak but barely noticed a difference after removing them and letting them air-dry.

If you’ve found a way to clean sriracha from Crocs, we’d love to hear about it, because right now our best advice is to consider drawing designs across the surface with even more sriracha to make the stains appear intentional.

Crocs makes a branded polish and cleanser called Crocs Shine that costs about $7 and comes with its solution already embedded in a sponge. We found that it did add some luster back to our Crocs, but like every other cleaning product we tried, it couldn’t touch sriracha. For everyday cleaning, you’re better off saving money and using regular dish soap and water. Plus, once the sponge runs out of solution, you have to buy a whole new rig. We don’t think a bit of shine is worth the extra environmental impact.

We initially planned to combine this guide with instructions for cleaning Birkenstock Arizona EVAs, but after a few side-by-side cleaning tests on more difficult stains yielded different results, we decided that the so-called “Birkencrocs” warrant a future cleaning story of their own, along with how to clean their leather and suede counterparts. For common stains like dirt though, washing EVAs with a sponge and Dawn worked just fine. Like Crocs, the company does not recommend putting them in a washing machine.

Nope, at least not at any traditional recycling centers we’ve found. The charity Soles4Souls accepts gently used pairs for donation, though. Cleaning your Crocs on a regular basis helps maintain that designation and extends their life span once you’ve outgrown them.

This article was edited by Joshua Lyon, Brittney Ho, and Sofia Sokolove.

Ellen Airhart is an associate writer at Wirecutter, where she covers cleaning and emergency preparedness. Please email her with your biggest messes and most anxious thoughts.

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