One month into the fall soccer season and I want to burn my daughter's soccer cleats!!!!

This is the time of year that I can not help but wonder, what after school activity could my child do that would not effect the smell on the inside of my car.  A couple of things come to mind: Mathletes, drama, choir...I guess there are many more but she loves soccer! (Good parent disclaimer: our kids play sports and instruments before I get comments on not focusing on the arts) She loves soccer so much that she apparently can not smell the noxious fumes that come from her lower legs and cleats.

I have chosen my car this past week over my child's smell and lower limb safety.  I purchased the 2 gallon zip-lock bags and I make her double bag her cleats and her shin guards until we get to the field.(I am sure this is on some type of soccer mom life hack website, but my inspiration was a matter of basic quality of life.)  Once we are in the open air, within a reasonable distance from other human beings, she can the start the process of putting her moldy, cruddy shin pads and cleats on then quickly cover them with thick socks so only she then can be affected by her own grossness!

Now as a foot doctor, I think I should have a better way to help my yucky child but I fall short like all busy parents.  Sometimes that drive from the office, which on my days to pick up the kids I get done around 2pm so I can be there for pick up, then homework, feeding, and then the extra-curricular activity, very little time exists to actually use your brain firing on all cylinders!  I am thankful to have a 50/50 partner in my husband(Dr. Henne, the other doctor in the office) so that this way harder job than seeing patients is not my responsibility every day!  We both take turns doing the hardest job there is: coordinating the academic, social, extra-curricular, feeding, hair doing ect.......of three girls under the age of 11.

As I sit here thinking about my smelly child who is soundly asleep and soccer cleats and shin pads securely on the front porch(as a secondary security system, as one whiff and you will not want break in this stinky house). I wonder the best ways to help her and the rest of the world not have to smell the gunk she is incubating weekly with her sweat and tools of nose destruction: cleats and shin pads! I realize I have so many anti-fungal preventive treatments in my office, why don't I put them to the test.  Because I am impatient I will be setting up a prospective experiment with only one test subject, my 10 year old Lily.   I will be spraying her cleats and shin pads daily with an anti-fungal spray I have for shoes in the office and sterilizing her cleats with a steri-shoe(an ultra-violet light that is supposed to kill the fungus molds and spores growing in her shoes).  This study will surely not be published in a peer reviewed journal, but if it works I will be able to help million of soccer, hockey, basketball, football, and well let's face it any parent with a kid with stinky equipment or cleats!

I am starting this "experiment" right now, I am going to give this experiment only until Halloween, in honor of how creepy her cleats truly are.  I hope to make it out alive from this experiment and hoping not to get a rare form of soccer cleat induced lung Aspergillosis.  If you have any life hacks for smelly cleats, please feel free to share under the comments. I will keep you updated weekly and if I think there is a chance in you know what that this will work I will surely let you know!