Having battled the funk for a few years and mostly losing (i.e. I’m much more likely to say ‘Sure!’ when the kids ask for new cleats), I decided to try the kitty littler ‘sachet’ suggestion from a commenter at My Tiny Kingdom, and see what happens. So off to Wal-Mart I go in search of the necessary items and what does the geek in me do? Debate over what kind of kitty litter to get. I’m so sad. I know it’s been around for a while, but I hadn’t seen the new silica gel based litter (as opposed to good ol clay litter). I know silica gel is used to keep products dry in their packages all the time (the little white packs that always say ‘DO NOT EAT’), so I figured it might be worth a shot. The packaging swore it was five times better than clay at absorbing and locking in odor, so we’ll see. I walked out with my $14 bag of Fresh Step Crystals and 2 sets of brand X knee highs. Here’s the result:

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I’ll update everyone on how it works in a week or so. I had to stick my fingers into the cleats farther than I wanted to, to get the bag all the way to the toe. But they came out unscathed. They’ve got about 36 hours to do their thing before the first matches Saturday morning. And yes the ones on the right are from my 4 year old. They don’t stink, but they were wet – we’ll see if it really can absorb some moisture.

ADDING: I used a plastic cup like you get from sports arena concessions to scoop out the litter. Then I put the knee high over the cup and flipped the cup over while pulling down on the knee high. Made a nice ‘litter log’ (boy THAT phrase could be taken multiple ways) that slipped into the cleats. The kids thought what I was doing was the coolest thing in the world. Why yes, my kids ARE the ones that’ll play in the cardboard box Christmas day, leaving the $100 toy under the tree.